Oli Patrick / Photo: FUTURE PRACTISE
Organisations are facing a range of social and environmental shifts that are far beyond the pace of their business development. An employee might be citing burnout when they’re working the same hours they worked 20 years ago, but back then they didn’t go home to global 24-hour news cycles; 1,000 lives better than theirs on Instagram, ultra-processed food and perpetual blue light.
There’s a huge opportunity for the health and fitness sector to make a compelling commercial case to the corporate sector. Behaviour change is the only meaningful way to influence health markers and productivity and no other profession can deliver habitual change across movement, nutrition and sleep like the health and fitness profession.
An estimated £4.17 billion is lost in the UK each year as a result of absenteeism and that’s not taking into account presenteeism. Looking at the Health and Safety at Work 2022 statistics, 51 per cent of new or long-term sickness is due to stress, anxiety or depression; 27 per cent is caused by musculoskeletal problems and the remaining 22 per cent comprise a multitude of conditions where lifestyle may play a role in preventing return to work.
Improving cardiovascular fitness, movement quality and muscle mass would immediately make an impact on the health of the workforce. We have incredible data around the power of exercise to be more effective than antidepressants at a certain level and musculoskeletal problems are largely a disease of being sedentary.
Organisations are spending huge amounts of money on return-to-work schemes, when they would be better off investing in maintaining the health of their workforce as part of their core offering.
Some organisations have taken it upon themselves to do health checks for their people – such as blood pressure monitoring – to see if they have specific health issues, rather than creating an overall wellness environment and using a preventative approach to ensure they have the best opportunity to be healthy. This is where the fitness industry can play a significant role.
The core skills are already in place in the sector to partner with corporates and improve the health of the workforce, but there are a few challenges. The word fitness is one: we need to use the term wellbeing and recognise that outside the gym environment, body aesthetics are less important. There is also the challenge of speaking to those who are inactive because they feel excluded from exercise because of school sport. Much bigger traction will come if we talk about movement beyond the concept of fitness; nutrition, but not sports nutrition, as well as sleep and stress.
• www.pillarwellbeing.com
There’s a huge opportunity for the health and fitness sector to make a compelling commercial case to the corporate sector