Company Health and Wellness : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Gaining Upper Management Support

Gaining senior staff support is essential to the success of a physical exercise program.

Whether the changes you’d like to see involve the work environment, overall policies or specific programs, successfully launching your ideas is dependent upon upper management backing.

Support from upper management is critical for 3 reasons:

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

It’s valuable to keep management involved throughout a physical activity initiative, but at three points you’ll need support 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

Prior to going to management to gain initial backing for promoting physical exercise during work, do your homework.

• Prepare a business case clearly outlining how the business will benefit by promoting physical activity during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate advantages of physical exercise and the advantages of being active during work.
• 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 employer?
• How can we encourage 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 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 better 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.