Remember PE lessons at school? If you were anything like me you would have cherished that one glorious day of the week when you finally got to break out of the confines of your stuffy classroom, inhale some fresh air and run free as fast as your little legs could carry you.
Workers engaged in health promotion activities are more motivated, more productive and take fewer sick days
Even if you weren’t the sporty type, the break from mundane indoor academic tasks was more likely than not, a welcome one.
Our PE lessons incorporated the perfect blend of enjoyable physical activity and those nuggets of vital information from our PE teachers about the dangers of sweets and junk food, and how continuing to exercise would help us grow into strong healthy pictures of adolescent and adult health.
Well, what if we could enjoy the same feelings in the workplace? Don’t you sometimes feel trapped in the confines of your office? What if a special type of PE teacher could come and rescue us once or twice a week, take us out into the fresh air for a couple of hours of active games, and dispense equally valuable advice about how to trim our waistlines down and combat the risk of health problems.
It seems a new breed of industrial physical education might just be what the future holds in store for us. We’ve known about the benefits of corporate wellness programmes for some time now, but brand new Swedish research takes the issue to a whole new level.
A study from Stockholm University and the Karolinska Institute has been published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, exploring the effects of a work-based physical activity programme actually conducted during work hours.
The findings show it is indeed possible to devote time during work hours towards health promotion activities, just like we did at school, and still attain the same if not higher levels of productivity.
In other words, the same productivity, if not more, can be attained in fewer hours when your workforce is fitter. Apart from higher productivity, fitter workers enjoy a boost in motivation, better health and report fewer days sick.
The study split the workers into three groups across two separate workplaces. The first group had their work hours reduced by two-and-a-half hours, which they instead spent exercising for two sessions per week.
The second group had their hours reduced by the same amount, but were not encouraged to exercise, while the third group experienced no change to their regular routine of working 40 hours per week.
Results surprisingly showed that productivity was unaffected across the board. A reduction of two-and-a-half hours per week was not enough to reduce productivity at all, whether the workers exercised or not.
But the first group that took part in a work-based exercise programme displayed one substantial added bonus. Members of this group reported sick for consistently fewer days when compared with the same period over the previous year, and demonstrated enhanced mood and self-assessed work capacity in an interview conducted following the end of the study.
But simply indulging in physical activity is only one side of the corporate wellness coin. Educating about healthier living has also been proven to improve workers’ health.
A large study by the University of Michigan in the US looked into the state of health of workers at the West Michigan Hospital. The wellness programme they implemented included a health risk appraisal, three counselling sessions throughout the year, and three learning modules on general healthy living.
The study began in 2002 and ran over four years. During the first health appraisal, 51 per cent of employees were deemed to be at low risk of contracting health problems that could cause absenteeism and negatively affect productivity.
By the end of the programme, this had risen to 64 per cent. By contrast, the number of workers who were at high risk fell from 19 to 12 per cent over the same four-year period.
One of the major findings drawn from the Michigan study was that it turns out to be a lot cheaper for employers to keep healthy workers at low risk of health problems, rather than turn around the unhealthy workers and convert them from high to low risk.
Thanks to Stockholm University we know that two-and-a-half hours less work during the week is not enough to lower productivity, and workers who spend those hours engaged in health promotion activities are more motivated, more productive and take fewer sick days.
We also know that a combination of counselling and education as seen in West Michigan Hospital can keep health workers healthy, and to a lesser degree, actually decrease the amount of employees at high risk of health problems. It sounds like a good old fashioned physical education programme is just what the fit doctor ordered for industry.
Are we primed for a revolution in adult work-based PE? As obesity levels continue to rise, and obesity-related medical conditions continue to incur ever-increasing healthcare costs, watch out pencil-pushers, because the PE teacher will be back!
info@noble-gym.com