Prioritise an employee fitness provision for a ripple effect that positively impacts your entire business.
Is physical activity an important employee benefit?
Employee benefits aren’t just a way to attract top talent to your organisation. They’re also a valid way to retain happy, healthy staff members. As management, you have the responsibility of selecting employee benefits that truly improve your staff members’ lives both in and out of the workplace.
Numerous studies show that engaging in regular physical activity is fundamental to stress management, social connections, cognitive health, and long-term health outcomes.
Fitness is about so much more than sweating it out at the gym or striving for a better looking body. A smart choice of physical activity benefits for your employees will have a positive impact on their team work, creativity, self-image, and confidence.
Benchmark your company with a personalised wellness scorecard – here.
Why get employees more active in the UK?
UK Government guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week for the best health and wellbeing outcomes. Figures published in 2022 show that 61.4% of people in England aged 16+ are meeting these targets.
This suggests that almost half of your workforce may not be meeting the minimum health guidelines for physical activity. And you can help, by offering appealing, accessible fitness benefits. Remember that most people need encouragement to engage with fitness once – let alone make it a habit.
How to encourage employee engagement with fitness
Your choice of physical activity employee benefit could have a significant impact on each individual’s lifelong health, and contribute to a more active general population. When you’re choosing a strategic partner for your provision of employee fitness, think about how your people will want to engage in physical activity. Offer them choice, flexibility, and accessible ways to trial different forms of fitness so they find one they enjoy.
Physical fitness as an umbrella benefit for wellbeing
Physical activity has far-reaching effects on physical and mental wellbeing. As well as keeping individuals mobile, fit, and healthy, it also impacts emotional and social health.
Offering fitness as a benefit is a smart move for employers, too, because you’ll reap the rewards in terms of employee productivity, creativity, motivation, retention, and reduced absenteeism related to a vast range of physical and mental issues.
Fitness is an employee benefit that has relevance to all employees regardless of age and stage of life, gender, employment status, mobility, or income level. In fact, it’s one of few employee benefits that truly improves physical and emotional wellbeing for every single employee on any given day of the week.
Fitness for employees – benefits for your workplace
Attract and retain talent
When your organisation offers a fresh and exciting fitness benefit for employees, you will attract vibrant people who care about their health and wellbeing. And when that benefit can keep pace with the changing demands of your workforce, it will help you retain good people too.
Team work and friendships
Fitness and exercise have the power to forge strong bonds and transcend social groups. Offering gym and fitness class memberships to your workforce may help break down barriers between top management and front of house staff, leading to increased cohesion.
Productivity and mental clarity
People who regularly engage in physical activity report being able to focus, think clearly, and come up with more creative ideas than their sedentary counterparts. Offering a fitness employee benefit will have an impact on staff productivity, ideas generation, mood, and motivation.
Morale and self-worth
By helping your employees engage with fitness, you are helping them take control of their health. This will lead to higher morale, self confidence, and self-worth throughout the workplace.
Long-term health outcomes
Offering physical activity as an employee benefit will have a measurable impact on absenteeism, early retirement, and time off due to ill-health. Exercise has numerous well studied benefits on physical health, long term health outcomes, mental wellbeing, and healthier ageing.
How to choose the best fitness offer as an employee benefit
The rise of flexible and hybrid working means you need to find a fitness partner who can support you with a truly flexible fitness employee benefit package. Having a gym on site, or offering membership to one local gym simply won’t be good enough for a dispersed workforce.
Make sure your employee benefits package gives your people the choice of fitness on their terms. This means the option of fitness near the workplace, and near their home, as well as wherever they might travel for meetings or hybrid working. You also need to think about offering a large variety of fitness options (not just the gym), and meeting a demand for early or late exercise sessions.
Offer Hussle as a discounted benefit for your employees
Hussle offers users a way to access a huge variety of fitness options across its one network, any location model. Talk to us about partnering with Hussle to give your employees discounted access to our UK-wide network of gyms, pools, fitness centres, spas, and sports spaces. Your staff members could use Hussle for as one-off visits, for access to multiple gyms, or for discounted gym membership to one location.
Hussle is the ultimate in cost-effective, flexible access to fitness that suits your hybrid workplace model. Talk to us to discuss great discounts for your employees that will benefit the individuals, their teams, and your entire organisation.
