Posted by Health Handouts | Posted in Health Handouts, Health Tips | Posted on 13-08-2009
Gaining senior staff support is essential to the success of a physical exercise initiative.
Whether the changes you’d like to see involve the work environment, overall policies or specific programs, successfully implementing your ideas depends on senior staff reinforcement.
Support from senior staff is essential for three reasons:
• You need their support to involve workers in a workplace program.
• When senior staff pays attention to and supports plan, employees also view the plan as worthwhile.
• Senior Management has the authority to give work time and money to support the initiative.
It’s significant to keep upper management involved throughout a physical activity plan, but at three points you’ll need reinforcement for:
• An central concept, including a go-ahead to evaluate what employees want to do within the limitations of your workplace environment.
• A detailed plan (based on the assessment above) coupled with resources to carry out the plan.
• Reviewing the initiative to improve it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the initiative.
Approaching Senior Management
Before going to management to gain initial support for promoting physical activity during work, do your homework.
• Prepare a business case clearly outlining how the business will benefit by promoting physical exercise during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate benefits of physical exercise and the benefits of being active during work.
• Present some cursory ideas about what the program could include. See the Success Stories and Ideas sections on this website to highlight what other workplaces have done.
Expect questions such as the following from management:
• How will this help our corporation?
• How can we motivate workers to take part?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How will we know a year from now whether or not this was a meaningful use of time and resources?
Ask managers about the types of activities they would support. Often managers have their own ideas they would like to see acted on to better the workplace.
Remember to include middle managers when gaining backing for your initiative. They may prove to be very helpful when you need volunteers to lead teams in corporate physical exercise challenges.