We know it’s important to incorporate exercise into our day, but how can business owners or managers encourage their employees to do the same?
Inspiring health and fitness in the workplace involves more than a one-off corporate yoga session or an annual all-day fitness challenge. Ensuring your employees are happy and healthy requires a long-term approach aimed at removing the barriers to exercise during each working day.
“It’s about building a culture and a workplace environment where staff feel comfortable dedicating time to their own health and fitness,” says Ben Wisbey, the managing director of FitSense Australia – a provider of corporate wellness programs. “There’s a difference between saying that your staff health is important and actually putting that into practise.”
According to Wisbey, encouraging health and fitness among your employees is essentially about helping them to avoid being stuck behind their desk eight hours a day and providing them with the flexibility and structure they need to do that is key.
“Entering local events which staff can participate in as teams or encouraging them to get out and walk at lunchtime – ensuring they have more time to implement health and fitness into their life,” he explains. “Lots of organisations want to encourage health and fitness but frown upon employees coming in at quarter past nine in the morning. That flexibility is important … Ultimately, putting more restrictions around hours increases the barriers to people [and their ability to incorporate exercise into their day].”
One of the more popular approaches among organisations, Wisbey says, is the encouragement of regular movement in the office.
“Research indicates that we need to move at least two minutes every half and hour or so,” he says. “There are a couple of ways to encourage that such as having a five-minute break each hour where staff come together and do stretching or movements, or just encouraging things such as walking to the printer, getting a drink, walking to talk to colleagues instead of emailing them. Looking at ways of encouraging movement throughout the day is really vital.”
Another important element is the social bonding among employees around health and fitness. Wisbey says making any type of change within the office will be difficult if employees aren’t involved in it together.
“We see more success if there’s a group encouraging each other,” he says.
While he emphasises that everyone is different – “some people like the gym while others prefer going for a walk outside” – Wisbey says the main objective is to reduce the barriers to physical activity and to take a long-term approach.
“Any improvement takes time. It needs to be a continuous process,” he says.