Carolyn Rathbun is the fitness center services manager for Park Nicollet HealthSource, a provider of work site and fitness center services. Her employees manage fitness centers and health promotion services at a number of Twin Cities–based companies. She stresses the need for companies to reach out to their employees who are not active and are too intimidated to start a fitness routine. She talks about “movement,” rather than working out, as a first step toward getting these people active.
“It’s about cumulative movement throughout the day. So if you can take the stairs, take the stairs. If you can walk on the treadmill for five minutes, walk on the treadmill. During your lunch hour, instead of sitting down for an hour, go outside and walk for 10 minutes,” says Rathbun. Changing the perception that exercise requires people to wear tight clothes and get sweaty may get employees moving. “The people who aren’t moving are making the biggest impact on your health care costs,” she says.
The process of setting up a health promotion or fitness plan for the first time can be a daunting one. And Manley and Rathbun agree that it needs to be done with the same forethought that companies give to all of their major planning decisions. It’s not unusual for companies to implement a plan by phasing it in over two or three years, just as they might with a marketing or production plan.
“Many companies these days are looking at health and healthcare costs as something they want to manage, just like they manage other processes and other issues in their work environment,” says Manley. “It takes a somewhat broader commitment to health that has to be communicated from top management. They need to say, ‘We care about your health and we want to help you stay healthy.’”
After choosing a fitness plan, employers need to collaborate with employees to make changes to the workplace, says Manley: “Many companies have health improvement committees within their workplace so they can talk about how to get things done.”
Manley recommends asking some tough questions: What policies and procedures are helping people to be active or keeping them from being active? Are areas where people can be physically active easily accessible to employees while at work? The most successful company fitness plans offer a range of opportunities, from walking groups to weightlifting classes.
“To really have impact on employees, it does take more than a one-time effort. It takes some work in a whole variety of areas,” says Manley. “It isn’t necessarily expensive, but it’s work that has to be done and thought about a little bit. It’s something that is built into the work environment on an ongoing basis.”
At Ceridian, where Tenner works, the fitness center offers classes before and after work, and even during lunchtime. “The head of our company is always saying, ‘You guys have got to make time for this. I’d rather have you healthy than be sick,’” Tenner says.
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On the Move at Work Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota offers online information packets for employers to begin to build a healthy workplace environment. Some suggested activities: Challenge employees to park farther away for the extra walk. Encourage them to take a 10-minute walk break during the day or to bike or walk to work. Encourage employees to have walking meetings. Have employees decorate the stairwells so they’re more attractive for users. Organize a physically active volunteer opportunity, such as raking leaves, painting houses, or picking up trash from parks. Hold a “celebrate stairs day” where employees are rewarded for only using the stairs. Using sidewalk chalk, create a hopscotch board outside the front door of your building. Adapted from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota’s “Do” program.
Dr. Bill Roberts is an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He also is the medical director for the Twin Cities Marathon and a former president of the American College of Sports Medicine. Roberts is a vocal advocate for making fitness a routine part of life, whether it be through your workplace or not. “Exercise is relatively inexpensive, as long as you don’t do too much, too soon, too fast, or too hard. With regular fitness types of exercise—walking, jogging, biking—you don’t get hurt,” says Roberts. “It’s inexpensive and much cheaper than all the medications we can put you on for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, trying to bring your weight down, diabetes, and all those things.” The benefits of a regular fitness routine are: weight control, better sleep, stress reduction, more energy, and generally feeling better. People often overestimate how much activity it takes to garner health benefits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Sports Medicine, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield recommend 30 minutes of moderately intense physical activity—such as brisk walking—every day. All three groups say that breaking exercise up into 10-minute segments, three times per day, is beneficial, too. |
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