Health Fairs

Gaining management reinforcement is vital 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 management reinforcement.

Support from management is vital for three reasons:

• You need their agreement to involve employees in a workplace initiative.
• When management pays attention to and supports initiative, employees also view the initiative as worthwhile.
• Upper Management has the authority to give work time and money to support the initiative.

It’s significant to keep management involved throughout a physical exercise initiative, but at three points you’ll need reinforcement for:

• An overall 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.
• Evaluating the initiative to improve it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the initiative.

Approaching Upper Management

Before going to management to gain initial reinforcement for promoting physical exercise during the workday, 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 advantages of physical exercise and the advantages of being active during the workday.
• Present some general ideas about what the program might 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 business?
• How can we excite employees to participate?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now whether or not this was a meaningful use of time and resources?

Ask managers about the range of activities they would support. Often managers have their own ideas they would like to see acted on to improve the workplace.

Remember to include middle managers when gaining reinforcement for your initiative. They may prove to be very helpful when you need volunteers to lead teams in corporate physical exercise challenges.