Your Company Invested Thousands
...into a fitness center for staff use. But once the new car smell wore off, only the employees you'd expect to use the facility are still taking advantage of it consistently. You crunched the numbers and you haven't saved as much on employee healthcare as you had hoped, morale isn't better but at least it isn't worse, and productivity seems the same it's been for years. How can you get your staff, your team, your most valuable assets more active?
It's the same song and dance
...as the rest of the fitness industry. In fact, it's human nature. Without direction, humans do one of two things, we either trial and error ourselves through a process until we get it right, or we toss the issue aside and move on.
Unfortunately, the latter is most often the case when it comes to being healthy. We typically only trial and error to succeed over problems or accomplish goals that are immediately necessary.
In the Office, that could mean choosing between working on an important project, or attempting to break a sweat on a few machines because we may not have all the tools we need in our belt to accomplish a workout worthwhile in a short amount of time. Yet, "This project has a deadline, and at least I know how to handle it."
For the employees who lack those tools and need guidance, they'll choose the project work every time. Unknowingly with less focus and energy than had they circled back to the project after a good sweat pumped their endorphin levels.
According to the CDC
General Motors found that the employees who exercised 1-3 times per week had about $250 in annual health care savings compared to inactive employees. When the researchers implemented more obese employees into regular activity, the average savings rose to $450. That's per employee!
This helped determine that approximately 1.5% of health care cost could be saved if not only already-active employees used the fitness facility to stay active, but the inactive employees become active.
Not just savings, but profit too!
A 2009 scientific review of 28 different studies examined workplace activity and found that corporate offices who encouraged or even paid for employee activity not only improved employee health (shocker) but also as a byproduct, lowered absenteeism, reduced sick leaves, and increased overall productivity.
But you already knew that didn't you?
That's why the company invested so much into having a facility just a short stroll away from the office. The researchers for General Motors took it a step further though. They invested their efforts into those who needed it. The employees who, more than likely, were costing too much for health care and maybe weren't accomplishing their full potential in the office.
It's not too late
Your team needs another leader. You lead them through corporate warfare to the top of their careers by teaching them new skills and sharpening others.
In the fitness facility, some may need a leader to guide them through the physical or psychological warfare of exercise. An on-site personal trainer will also teach them new skills, physically functional or biologically healthier. That trainer can also sharpen current skills by progressing general exercise to more challenging variations and techniques.
Everyone wins, together.
Gallup also found that improving employee wellbeing is divided and can be measured by
- Career Wellbeing
- Social Wellbeing
- Financial Wellbeing
- Physical Wellbeing
- Community Wellbeing
And being given not only access, but time from their employer to be active improves all of the above.
So, What's Next?
You Need to Re-Engage Your Team
- Find out your employees' needs and expectations for their wellbeing
- Prioritize what programs you either already have or need to implement to improve the team's wellbeing
- Leverage a fitness professional to help activate behavior change and rewrite the social norm of taking just 30-40minutes in their workday for exercise
- Final steps: Measure any difference in team morale and energy at the 3-6 month mark, measure any difference in productivity and quality of work in the 6-9 month mark, measure any difference in overall company profit increase or health care costs decrease YOY at the 9-12 month mark
And lastly, the cold truth. If you happen to not see a positive change after the fitness professional addition by month 6, you have hired the wrong fitness professional.
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