Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

A good way for employees to measure their fitness progress is with portable tracking devices. These can range from the traditional pedometer to more advanced equipment.

Pedometers To Track Employee Health Progress

Pedometers come in all shapes and sizes. Enter "pedometer" into the Amazon search bar and you'll pull up 1,711 different options. Some measure only steps, whereas others have additional bells and whistles. Pedometers range in price from $4 to around $60.

Other High-Tech Employee Health Tracking Tools

In the last year, a new fitness-tracking tool has come on the market. Fitbit is a handy little gadget that clips onto your waistband like a pedometer. However, this high-tech tool tracks more than a typical pedometer by measuring calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, and sleep quality. You can link the unit to your computer and store your data on Fitbit's robust tracking site. You can also join Fitbit's communities, follow its blog, and track other health markers.

At $99 per unit, the gadget is less expensive than the popular iPod nano and provides significant personal logging capabilities to track progress.

How Small Companies Can Use High-Tech Tools In Workplace Wellness Campaigns

Small employers: The Fitbit might provide a unique tool for your workforce to start moving more. Using the website tools connected with the device, you could easily build a workplace fitness program on which to base company wellness rewards.

Most employers have blocked social networking sites like Facebook on their company computers while simultaneously establishing robust social media policies. It’s not surprising; the reasons to block social media content from company computers are many.

Social Media and Workplace Wellness

The truth is, your workforce is still out there playing FarmVille, tweeting on Twitter, and sharing YouTube content. Maybe it’s time to get social with your employee wellness program, by not only allowing social media use but also by creating a social media presence for your wellness program.

Top Three Reasons to Revisit Social Media Policies

1. Your employees are already out there. According to Cisco’s 2010 Midyear Security Report, an alarming 50 percent of surveyed employees admitted to surfing the web socially even though they knew it was against company policy. In addition, 27 percent of respondents took matters into their own hands by reconfiguring the settings on company computers to allow access to previously blocked content.
2. Research tells us social networks matter. The Framingham Heart Study is one of the most well-known, comprehensive health studies in the industry. It followed, among other things, the impact of social networks on tobacco use and obesity trends from 1971 to 2003. It turns out that social networks have a very powerful influence on whether and how individuals will change health behavior.
3. Quiet leaders might surface through social media. We’re always talking about the importance of employee champions for your wellness program. It’s common for those individuals to take the superhero form of the already-in-shape and always-eats-right marathon runner who wants to encourage her coworkers to be like her. Social media allows the quiet champions—the unassuming former smoker, or the less obvious heart-attack-waiting-to-happen who made small changes over time to improve his health—a platform to speak out, encourage, and quietly motivate their colleagues to take baby steps toward improving health.

Consider How The Good Side of Social Media Can Work for Your Corporate Wellness Initiatives

Using social media to promote your employee wellness program is hard for most executives to buy into because of the productivity concerns. However, this free communication and sharing opportunity might provide more benefit than you expect. Your employees are already out there socializing. Why not meet them where they are with the messages you want them to hear?

Corporate fitness folks hear it all the time: "I really want to work out on my lunch hour, but I don’t want to sweat at work." It's a legitimate excuse. Some of us sweat in ways that it takes hours to recover from. And who wants to smell sweaty for the rest of the day?

Yoga – A Perfect Fitness Fit for Employee Health

That being said, avoiding exercise altogether will only result in overweight employees. Instead, think of yoga as the answer. We don’t mean that in an all-the-world's-mysteries-can-be-solved-while-you-meditate kind of way. But the truth is that yoga can challenge your muscles enough that employees will walk away from class feeling both relaxed and rejuvenated while barely breaking a sweat.

Employees Can Benefit from Yoga as Exercise

There is still debate on exactly how effective yoga can be for true, sustained weight loss. But yoga can positively impact flexibility and muscle tone as well as body image. Each of those pieces has a role in an individual's ability to maintain or lose weight.

How to Bring Yoga to Your Workplace

A great way to control healthcare costs is to start a yoga class at work. If you can’t afford to hire an instructor for a formal yoga class at your worksite fitness center or a vacant meeting room, try renting some DVDs from the library and borrowing a TV/DVD player combo from your AV room. Employees can also incorporate yoga into their day by using some yoga relaxation moves at their desks.

According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), time and cost-conscious exercise options will be among the top trends in fitness for 2010. 

What we love about this predicted number one trend in exercise habits is that it targets both time and cost which are two of the most common reasons reported for not exercising.  Even better though, is that it capitalizes on exercise programs that are both time- and cost- conscious which is great for employers who are looking for corporate fitness solutions to improve employee health.

To build a corporate fitness program with low cost exercise options to your workforce, consider these options:

• Set aside a small meeting room space as your new corporate fitness center.
• Consult with experts on space layout, exercise equipment selection, and liability reduction to maximize employee health benefits in your program. 
• Consider staffing solutions for your corporate fitness center to give your employees the expertise they need to get full health benefits from your fitness center.  
• Offer group fitness classes to support camaraderie and group accountability.

Remember, you don't have to make an enormous capital investment in exercise equipment to develop a robust and successful robust employee fitness program.  In fact, spending wisely on a few small, key fitness tools and toys may just put you ahead of the employee wellness curve!

There are more ways to build a corporate fitness program.  Share your best practices here and help other organizations get a solid start on their employee fitness program.