What shape is your workforce in?
By Rob Beale, Group Health and Fitness Manager
Getting people to adopt healthier lifestyles and improve the nation’s health continues to be a key factor for today’s society. Recently this drive has been seen to gather greater pace in the workplace where there has been an increased interest in improving health to enhance staff and business outputs.
Evidence shows that when employees exercise regularly, their motivation, concentration and efficiency goes up in leaps and bounds. In addition a healthy and active lifestyle can also help increase company productivity and reduce staff sickness absence; something that currently costs UK employers well over £12 billion a year.
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the average employee takes eight days off sick every year at a cost to the economy of £599 per person. In addition estimates suggest that 200million working days are lost every year to sickness absence.
So what impact can increased exercise have on the UK workforce? Exercisers work harder for longer and are on average 12.5% more productive than people who take no exercise. Those exercise avoiders take an average of five days more annual sick leave than their fitter counterparts.
At David Lloyd we know that there are significant long term reasons to encourage your staff to stay fit and healthy as exercise has been proven to boost the immune system, helping to fight off diseases, particularly colds and flu.
And bear in mind, whether your staff need encouragement to begin exercising or an incentive to keep motivated, we know it’s important to offer a range of exercise options to meet each individual’s needs. Bear in mind that exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous to be effective. Studies show that moderate physical activity is helpful and will such a range of options available at David Lloyd Leisure, now’s the time to get your workforce in shape.
