Employee Wellness : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Gaining Upper Management Support

Gaining management reinforcement is critical to the success of a physical activity plan.

Whether the changes you’d like to make involve the work environment, overriding policies or specific programs, successfully launching your ideas is dependent upon senior staff reinforcement.

Support from senior staff is critical for 3 reasons:

• You need their support to involve staff members in a workplace initiative.
• When senior staff pays attention to and supports initiative, staff members also view the initiative as worthwhile.
• Senior Management has the authority to give work time and money to support the initiative.

It’s valuable to keep management involved throughout a physical exercise plan, but at three points you’ll need support for:

• An overriding concept, including a go-ahead to assess what workers 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 better it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the initiative.

Approaching Upper Management

Prior to going to senior staff to gain initial reinforcement for promoting physical activity during work, do your homework.

• Prepare a organization case clearly outlining how the organization will advance by promoting physical activity during work.
• List the individual, social and corporate advantages of physical activity and the advantages of being active during the workday.
• Present some cursory 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 senior staff:

• How will this help our business?
• How can we innervate staff members to participate?
• How much will it cost to operate this program or bring about this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now if this was a good 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 improve the workplace.

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