Why companies should encourage sports at work

According to the 2011 CDC mortality statistics company, heart disease, cancer, and lower respiratory respiratory diseases, such as emphysema, are the most common causes of premature death in the United States. In 2011, 1,316,211 Americans died from these diseases.

Many deaths could have been prevented. It is no secret that regular exercise and proper nutrition can significantly reduce the percentage of people suffering from heart disease . However, almost 80% of American adults play sports much less than the recommended norm (2.5 hours of average aerobic exercise and 1 hour and 15 minutes of active exercise per week).

Considering how important sport is for health, I think that it is worth asking why not go in for sports where we spend a significant part of our life — at work? Of course, my own experience on this issue is difficult to take seriously, but it seems to me that it can still be applicable.
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In my office - I work in an IT company with a staff of about 700 employees - sports are encouraged before, after and during work. When we moved to a new office a few years ago, we immediately allocated space for a small gym and a yoga room. In addition, showers and dressing rooms were equipped. In comparison with other companies, everything is more than modest, but still the entire infrastructure created is regularly used. Yoga classes are held before work, at lunchtime and after work. Volunteers turned the gym into a real training camp, and now employees are not shy about sweating at the gym. Employees are grouped for group runs at lunchtime or for hiking in the evenings. We have teams for hockey, cycling and even Quidditch (the sports activity of this team comes down to broom fights in the park).

But when it comes to popularizing sports at work, having the right infrastructure and organized teams is not the main condition. It is much more important to have employees with the right attitude. Previously, when we worked in a small office in the industrial part of the city, we could not afford a gym (in fact, then we could not even afford phones). However, we built a horizontal bar for pull-ups and began to use gymnastic balls instead of chairs. We strongly encouraged employees to get to work on bicycles, even if we had to make sacrifices: it was impossible to leave bicycles on the street, and therefore we had to “store” them in a small foyer. In addition, the rules of the company clearly stated that everyone has the right to 1 hour of sports activities during the working day. True, these classes should not have impeded the holding of meetings, and the employee himself had to compensate for this hour of time, agreeing to dine not in the canteen but in the workplace.

I just see how managers, accustomed to working in the old manner, roll their eyes. In the end, the job of a manager is to get the necessary results from employees, and not to keep them in proper physical shape. However, even at a practical level, it turns out that it is very beneficial to allow employees to play sports at work. I see very well that the staff return after sports is fresh and energetic, ready to fully focus on work. The time spent on sport is fully offset by increased productivity. There are several solid studies that confirm my guess. For example, this study , presented to specialists of the American College of Sports Medicine, proves that employees who play sports during the lunch break for 30-60 minutes, on average, show an increase in productivity of 15%. Moreover, 60% of employees say that after playing sports, they spend their time more efficiently, their mental abilities increase, and their ability to cope with deadlines improves. In addition, the staff who participated in the study did not suffer so much from relaxation and fatigue after eating at lunch, and their overall emotional state improved significantly.

Do not forget about long-term benefits. Healthy and active employees take much less sick leave, not to mention the fact that they work much more actively and more energetically. A study published in the Journal on the Prevention of Occupational Diseases in 2011 found that employees who spend at least 2.5 hours of sports during the work week are much less likely to take sick leave. However, perhaps the most important advantage is that healthy and physically active workers are less susceptible to preventable diseases that cause great damage to society.

Speaking specifically about me, I am sure that I would not have been able to develop the company to its current state if I did not regularly go in for sports. Over the past 6 years, my company from a small office with 7 employees has grown to a company of international level with branches all over the world. This growth was very exciting, but not the easiest. Initially, I was responsible for marketing, and for the selection of employees, and for sales, and for product development, and for finance. Had to work 16 hours a day, without breaks and weekends. Then the stresses associated with the transformation of a small company into a world-class company were added: every week we had to hire dozens of employees, open several offices every month. From a business point of view, it is simply necessary to have such “problems”; However, from the point of view of an ordinary person, I would hardly have coped with the load, I could have remained calm and focused on the goal if I had not even played a little sports. Yoga really helped me.

As a child I loved sports very much - I played with frisbees, used to go mountain climbing, and rode a bicycle. However, just at the time when my company, Hootsuite, began to gain momentum, back problems started. I started practicing yoga in order to strengthen my back muscles and give myself time to recover. But I quickly discovered that yoga has a positive effect not only on the body, but also on the mind. Yoga is a kind of meditation in motion. She gave me time to clear my head of unnecessary thoughts, to process huge amounts of information that I had to work with every day, and also to look at existing problems from a different angle. In addition, yoga perfectly trains the whole body.

However, ultimately, it’s not how you play sports, it’s important to have a place to practice at work. It is said that spouses who go through trials together are better treated and not often divorced. I think that employees who go through physical exertion together, likewise, treat each other better, have the best team spirit. For several years, sports at work has become an integral part of our corporate culture, which newcomers happily support. Today, among our employees you can find marathon runners who can run 50 miles at a time, professional cyclists and triathletes, certified fitness trainers, rowers, swimmers, yogis, hikers and, of course, a lot of people who just don't mind occasionally sweating in the gym. .

Doing sports at work came up not yesterday. The advantages of this approach are more than obvious: health is maintained, the corporate spirit is improved, productivity is growing. I think that just need to pay attention to this topic again. Considering how many people die from heart disease and other preventable diseases, it is not an exaggeration to say that our future, our personal health, the health of our companies and the whole society directly depends on whether we play sports at work or not.

about the author

Ryan Holmes (Ryan Homes) - CEO of Hootsuite, founder of Invoke. I love social networks and startups, I enjoy cycling and yoga, I learn to walk on my hands.

Translation prepared by: greebn9k (Sergey Gribnyak), silmarilion (Andrey Khakharev)