Alcohol Awareness Week 2017

Why hold an Alcohol Awareness Week in your workplace?

• It’s simple, fun and a bit different – and it always gets people talking!

• Alcohol misuse costs workplaces £7.3Bn every year in the UK

• There’s evidence from NICE that raising awareness of personal drinking helps people to stick to lower drinking levels

1. The Basics – get people thinking

It’s easy to raise awareness – there are many online resources you can signpost to and simply holding an ‘Alcohol Awareness Week’ sends a signal. You can send out e-mails, post links on your intranet or generate your own resources.

2. Hold an event – have some fun

Here’s some ideas for raising awareness at your workplace:

• Mocktail Bar Shake Off

Get staff to bring in their best Mocktail recipes, ingredients and hold a Shake Off – everyone makes their favourite non-alcoholic drink and someone judges the best. Set up a Mocktail Bar and invite everyone along to take part, sample and vote!

• Go Dry for a Good Cause

Can staff go dry for the week and run, swim, cycle on one evening of the week – or the weekend – to raise money for a good cause? You can choose a local charity to support, or donate to a trusted alcohol charity.

• An evening of sport can also bring people together as a reminder that you don’t always have to go the pub after work.

If staff who normally drink have gone dry, how easy was it for them to stay dry for a week? Get them to post their comments (anonymously if preferred) and compile these on an End of Week Report.

• Drink Tracker Week

An alternative to Going Dry is to simply track your drinking over the week using a Drink Diary – staff may be surprised how much they’ve drunk. Was it more or less than the recommended guidelines. When did they drink the most – why?

• Hold a stall – invite a professional

Invite Alcohol Health Network to come and run a stall, with lots of awareness materials, a smoothie bike and beer google challenges.

• Lunch & Learn

Run a Lunch and Learn session on alcohol awareness. Invite Alcohol Health Network in to talk about alcohol and mental health, the unit guidelines, how to talk to your kids about alcohol, or even run a low/no alcohol drinks tasting - whatever would fit best in your workplace.

3. Visit a local alcohol charity

Many of us have a warped view of alcohol charities – do you really know what they do? Alcohol charities would love to open their doors to you and help you meet staff as well as clients who are alcohol dependent.

You’ll discover they are people like you and me – what’s their story? How did they become alcohol dependent? You may be surprised by what you hear.

Alternatively, invite them to come to your workplace and give you a lunchtime talk on their work. Simply phone them up and ask to speak to the manager.

4. The Full Monty – integrated awareness campaigns all year round

In addition to the initiatives above, Alcohol Health Network can support your organisation to develop alcohol awareness campaigns for the whole year.

Alcohol Training for Managers & Health Champions:

We provide training for your managers or Health and Wellbeing champions in how to spot an alcohol problem and where to signpost people for support. 

Alcohol Awareness Events:

Lunch & Learn, Alcohol Health Stalls

Online:

Drink Checker online self assessment & Online manager training

Materials:

Fact Sheets, Scratch Cards, Unit / Calorie counter wheels, Posters

Get in touch to find out more - hello@alcoholhealthnetwork.org.uk

 

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