It’s well-known that the health of most people everywhere, including in China, is deteriorating. Part of this is due to lack of exercise and lack of healthy lifestyles. But what has this got to do with running a successful business?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that good health does more than mean that we won’t get disease. If we have good physical and mental health it can improve our levels of intellectual, mental and emotional functioning in many really important ways.

In other words, if you invest in improving the mental and physical health of your employees, it’s going to do more than just make them feel good. It’s going to lead to have a real, measurable impact on your business and financial results.

There’s not much doubt about the physical side of health. If people are unhealthy or at least not fit there will be several effects. They will be sick more, stay away from work more, and even when they are at work, they won’t perform as well. And of course, if your company pays for health and medical costs or for health insurance, these will end up costing more if your employees are unhealthy.

I’m going to use two words here, namely wellness and fitness. By “fitness” I mean keeping your body and muscles in good shape by regularly doing exercise. And by “exercise” I mean vigorous exercise, I don’t include yoga or tai-chi.

It’s not that I don’t think yoga and tai-chi are not good things to do. It’s just that the research shows that it you want to get fit you have to get your heart to beat fast, you need to be breathing fast and you need to sweat. If those three things don’t happen, then it doesn’t count as exercise, even if it’s good for you in other ways.

By “wellness” I mean doing things to keep healthy, not just exercise. That means a good diet, plenty of sleep, controlling stress, keeping your weight under control and also keeping blood pressure under control. So it’s a wider concept.

But one thing you need to know; you can’t be doing a good job in wellness if you are not exercising regularly, and vigorously. There’s no free lunch here unfortunately.

Business Success and Fitness
 
But I am more interested in the business impacts of being healthy and fit. What I’m particularly interested in is how your business will perform, the types of products you have and the margins to achieve from those products. So how does being well and fit help you in those areas?

There has now been a huge amount of research into how fitness helps intellectual functioning. One piece of research shows that if you are a runner, or do vigorous exercise, a few minutes after you start your exercise your IQ will increase significantly. This effect lasts for about half an hour after you finish the exercise.

So if you know about this you can use this time to figure out your most amazing ideas. I do this regularly when I run.

If you are already an ideas person, you will get more ideas. If you are not you will likely get some. In both cases some of the ideas are going to end up in new or better products with higher margins or new ways to lower costs. So it’s worth doing that exercise if you want to maximize your chances of getting more innovative products with higher margins.

But that’s just short-term. What about the longer-term? Well there’s now a huge amount of research which proves that your brain will get bigger and your cognitive functioning will improve significantly over the longer term if you exercise regularly.

Generally as we get past our 20s, our brains get smaller and our cognitive functioning gently starts to decline. Usually you don’t see much effect from this until you are a lot older since experience compensates for the lack of cognitive power.

However if you exercise regularly, fairly vigorously, your brain will actually get bigger as you get older and your cognitive power will actually increase.

So if you have many long-term or older employees you can make them much more productive by encouraging them to exercise. And the younger employees too!

It will result in them performing much better on the job, will result in higher productively and better products and services and thus better financial results than you would otherwise achieve. Of course you employees will feel this and feel better about themselves too so both employees and employer win from this change.

Business Success and Mental and Emotional Health

Many people don’t like talking about mental and emotional health. Yet a huge number of people suffer from one or both and they can have crippling effects on a person’s life. When that happens it can also have major adverse effects on their work and therefore on the business results of their employer.

There’s now a wealth of research that shows conclusively that exercising regularly improves both mental and emotional health significantly. For example, for people who suffer from depression, exercising regularly is at least as effective as taking drugs. But of course, if you take drugs there are usually side effects, some of which can be quite serious. And by taking drugs
 
regularly it means you can only get relief when you are taking them. Moreover often their effect wears off. That doesn’t happen when you exercise.

In China, as in other developed countries, there are many factors which lead to mental and emotional problems. Some of them might be due to a person’s own biology. Some of it might be due to social factors such as the gradual breakdown of the extended family and the loss of family support as people get older.

So you can’t assume that in your company things will be any different. You will certainly have employees who are suffering from mental and emotional problems due to these issues.
However it is likely you won’t know it because they obviously won’t want to tell you.

Also you don’t know how these mental and emotional issues will impact your business and cause other problems such as poor customer service, lack of efficiency, or even bad behavior or worse on the job. Some of this problem can even lead to suicide which can have other serious impacts professionally for other employees.

On the other hand, if your employees exercise regularly they will have a much higher level of happiness. They will be more optimistic. They will be much more likely to be more cooperative and motivated at work. Again the research shows all of these effects conclusively. All of these can support your business success in powerful ways.

What can you do to improve the fitness of your employees?

What all this means if that if you can find ways to get your employees to participate in wellness and fitness programs, it’s going to help them and your business too. So it’s well worth doing.

But the big questions are, how can you get your employees to do some exercise and participate in wellness programs? After all, it takes a lot to get people to change their behavior. And your employees, like everyone else, are busy, they don’t have much spare time, their day is filled with work, children, and older parents, commuting and just getting on with the business of living.

So here are my suggestions to encourage your employees to participate in fitness programs:

Free membership in a health club or gym: Give people a free membership in a gym. Maybe you can give them and 1-2 hours a week off during work hours to use the gym. After all, their increased productivity and motivation is almost certainly going to make up for the lost time.

They don’t have to do just traditional exercise. They can also do things like dance, Zumba or Pilates. For those who do want to do more traditional exercise they can do things like Crossfit. And then you can form company teams at the gym for people who want to exercise together,
e.g. in weightlifting or dance.

Give your employees a free fitness tracker: There are now many fitness trackers on the market. Some are now becoming watches like the Apple watch. All of them show how much activity you are doing and have ways to encourage you to do more. I use a Fitbit but there are numerous other brands on the market. This will provide a powerful motivational tool for your employees to do more exercise.
 

Encourage them to compete on the Internet: once your employees have a fitness tracker they can start competing against each other to see for example who has done the most steps in a day. They can all opt to see each other’s results online. So it can become a lot of fun. If it wants the company can give bonuses for people who win. Or for people who improve the most. Or for people who lose weight. And so on.

Give bonuses for better health metrics: In Japan it’s now common for many companies to measure the waist size of employees very year to ensure that it’s small enough that they are not likely to get too fat and have health problems. So a company can give bonuses for waist size, weight, how much weight they can lose, or how fast they can run a particular distance (on an exercise machine in a gym). Lots of possibilities here.

Company sponsorship for marathons or other competitions: You probably have some runners in your company although maybe you don’t know who they are. Why not sponsor a company marathon team? Or weightlifting team? Bonuses for winners. Give them T-shirts with the company logo so you get some free advertising and show others that your company works with its employees to improve their physical and mental health.

Give employees exercise or standing desks: There are now new types of desks that allow you to stand up or sit down while you are in front of them and still use their computer. Some of them even have treadmills so they can walk while they are working. Both of these allow the employee to move wheel they are working. Sitting down all day is actually very unhealthy and anything
you can do to their workspace so that they move more is going to help their health and fitness as well as their mental functioning.

Provide cordless phones and headphones so people can walk when they are on the phone: This is another way to get people to move during the day instead of just unhealthily sitting at their desk. I do it all the time as long as I don’t have to be on my computer during the meeting. Even if I do I will start off walking during the meeting and go back to the computer if I need to see something on it during the meeting.

What can you do to improve the wellness of your employees?

So there are a few things an employer can do here too. Here are some other suggestions:

Weight control checkups: organize regular weight checkups for employees which are free. If they are overweight give them free membership of Weight Watchers or a similar organization.

Free salads at lunchtime; Employees often eat lunches that are too high in calories. This will make them sleepy and lethargic when they go back to work. Why don’t you supply food for employees at lunchtime, but make it mainly healthy salads. That way your employees can get free lunches but they have to eat healthily,

Sleep advice: If you have given your employees free activity checkers, these also keep record of sleeping patterns. If the employees are not getting enough sleep arrange for a free sleep consultation with a sleep adviser.
 
Set up sleeping rooms for short naps: These days many people don’t get enough sleep. Research shows that if you lack sleep it will lead to poorer health. The research also shows conclusively that a short nap during the day helps increase alertness and mental functioning significantly, providing it isn’t too long. So you should encourage your employees to have a short nap. Just make sure there are alarm clocks in the room to make sure they don’t oversleep.

Mindfulness classes for stress control: Offer free mindfulness or meditation classes to help people who are suffering from stress or don’t have it under control.

Blood pressure monitors: Offer to give your entire employee a free blood pressure monitor they can use at home. Many will not know their blood pressure. Part of wellness if to get people into the habit of regularly checking their blood pressure so that if it is too high, they can seek medical help.

Smoking cessation classes: Smoking is one of the most unhealthy activities that your employees can engage in. Smokers have a much higher lifetime cost for healthcare and that’s going to cost your company money. It pays you to help them quit smoking. It will also pay them, both in financial terms and in terms of health and quality of life.

Dr. E. Ted Prince, the Founder and CEO of the Perth Leadership Institute, located in Florida in the US has also been CEO of several other companies, both public and private. He is the author of two books: “The Three Financial Styles of Very Successful Leaders” (McGraw-Hill, 2005) and “Business Personality and Leadership Success”, Amazon Kindle 2011 as well as numerous other publications in this area. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He works with large corporations globally on leadership development programs and coaches senior executives and teams in the area of financial leadership. He has held the position of Visiting Professor at the
University of Florida in the US in its Graduate Business School and also at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in China.