Employee Wellness Newsletter : Workplace Physical Activity Programs: Gaining Senior Management Support

Gaining upper management backing is vital to the success of a physical exercise program.

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

Support from upper management is vital for 3 reasons:

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

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

• An overall concept, including a go-ahead to assess 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 plan to better it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the plan.

Approaching Senior Leadership

Prior to approaching upper management to gain initial reinforcement for promoting physical exercise during the workday, do your homework.

• Prepare a organization case clearly outlining how the organization will profit by promoting physical activity during work.
• List the individual, social and corporate benefits of physical activity and the benefits of being active during work.
• Present some basic 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 upper management:

• How will this help our business?
• How can we motivate workers to take part?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now if this was a meaningful use of time and resources?

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

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