Why companies should encourage sports at work

According to the 2011 CDC mortality statistics firm , heart disease, cancer, and lower respiratory tract infections, 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's 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 go in for sports much less than the recommended norm (2.5 hours of average exercise aerobic exercise and 1 hour and 15 minutes of active exercise per week).

Considering how important sport is to health, I think it’s worth asking a question, why not play sports where we spend a significant part of our lives — at work? Of course, my own experience on this issue is difficult to take seriously, but it seems to me that, nevertheless, it can be applied.

In my office - I work in an IT company with about 700 employees - sports are strongly encouraged before, after and during work. When we moved to the new office a few years ago, we immediately allocated a place for a small gym and yoga room. In addition, showers and changing rooms were equipped. In comparison with other companies, everything is more than modest, but nevertheless they regularly use the entire created infrastructure. 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 on simulators. Employees join in groups for jogging on lunch breaks or for hiking in the evenings. We have hockey teams

But, when it comes to promoting 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 though we had to make sacrifices: it was impossible to leave bicycles on the street, and therefore we had to “store” them in a small lobby. In addition, the rules of the company clearly stated that everyone has the right to 1 hour of sports during the working day. True,

I can see how managers, accustomed to working the old fashioned way, roll their eyes. In the end, the manager’s job is to achieve the necessary results from employees, and not to maintain them in proper physical shape. However, even at a practical level, it turns out that allowing employees to play sports at work is very beneficial. I can clearly see that the employees returning after playing sports are fresh and energetic, ready to fully and fully focus on work. The time spent on sports is fully offset by increased productivity. There are several solid studies that support my hunch. For example, here is a study, presented to specialists at the American College of Sports Medicine, proves that employees who play sports at lunchtime for 30-60 minutes show an average productivity increase of 15%. Moreover, 60% of employees say that after playing sports they spend 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 lunch, and their overall emotional state improved significantly.

Do not forget about the long-playing benefits. Healthy and active employees take much less sick leave, not to mention the fact that they work much more actively and more energetically. Studypublished in the Journal of Prevention of Occupational Diseases in 2011, showed that employees who spend at least 2.5 hours on sports during the working week take sick leave much less. However, perhaps the most important advantage is that healthy and physically active workers are less susceptible to preventable diseases that cause great harm 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 had not been involved in sports regularly. Over the past 6 years, my company from a small office with 7 employees has grown to an international company with branches around 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. I had to work 16 hours a day, without breaks and days off. 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 perspective, such “problems” are simply necessary; however, from the point of view of an ordinary person, I would hardly cope with the load, I could remain calm and focused on the goal, if at least I did not go in for sports. Yoga really helped me.

As a child, I loved sports very much - I played with frisbee, went in for mountaineering, rode a bicycle. However, just at the time when my company, Hootsuite, was gaining momentum, back problems started. I started doing yoga 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 movement. She gave me time to clear my head of unnecessary thoughts, process huge volumes of information that I had to work with daily, and also look at the problems from a different angle. In addition, yoga perfectly trains the whole body.

However, in the final analysis, it’s important not how and what kind of sport you do, it’s important to have a room to practice at work. It is said that spouses who go through trials together are better related to each other and not divorced so often. I think that employees who go through physical exertion tests together are treated the same way better and have a better team spirit. For several years, playing sports at work has become an integral part of our corporate culture, which newcomers are happy to 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, hiking enthusiasts and, of course, many people who just don't mind sweating in the gym .

They thought up playing sports at work not yesterday. The advantages of this approach are more than obvious: health is maintained, the corporate spirit is improved, productivity is growing. I think it’s just necessary to pay attention to this topic once again. Given how many people are dying of heart disease and other preventable diseases, it is no exaggeration to say that our future, our personal health, the health of our companies and society as a whole depends on whether we play sports at work or not.

about the author

Ryan Homes is the CEO of Hootsuite, founder of Invoke. I love social networks and startups, I am fond of cycling and yoga, learning to walk on my hands.

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