Getting fit for business

Many would agree that the most important obligation a responsible business can have is to look after its own people. BT, through its Work Fit and Quit with Work Fit programmes is aiming to show it can go even further...

Last September BT embarked on the worlds biggest ever company lifestyle programme when it launched Work Fit, an initiative designed to improve the health and fitness of BT people. More than sixteen thousand BT employees signed up for Work Fit, each of them keen to become slimmer, fitter and healthier by participating in the 16 week online course.

For BT the overall objective of Work Fit is to contribute to the development of a healthy workplace culture within the company. One that encourages staff to make sustainable improvements on their lifestyle. In addition, the initiative provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of the programme on morale, performance, absenteeism and productivity.

Work Fit succeeded in striking such a resonant chord throughout our workforce, said Dr Paul Litchfield, BTs chief medical officer, and there are a number of reasons why.

There is a general awareness across the population about the problems we have because of our overly rich western diet and the acknowledgement that most of us dont get enough exercise within the lifestyles we lead. This was echoed in the fact that a huge number of people, about 20 per cent of BT employees, felt they needed to do something to change their lifestyle.

But what we did was to make the programme really simple, said Dr Litchfield. The message we stressed was that people needed to make very simple changes to their lifestyles to get results. Nothing too demanding or dramatic was required of them. Things like using the stairs instead of the lift or cutting out one or two small items from peoples diets. Things that wouldnt really be missed.

Positive changes

If people could add these elements together and keep them going over a long period sixteen weeks in fact - then major positive changes could be made to an individuals health and fitness. This message that Work Fit wasnt going to be too difficult, was an important reason for its success.

BTs internal communications team helped to promote Work Fit around the company using a variety of internal media as well as regional employee road shows. A strong momentum soon developed as more people signed up, more people talked about the scheme, encouraging others to join.

The message itself was deliberately written to appeal to the target group that often gets missed out in health messages, said Dr Litchfield. The majority of health messages tend to be targeted at the younger, female population. Thats why we worked closely with the Mens Health Forum to try and ensure that our message would appeal to middle-aged men who were our primary target audience.

We were particularly pleased when we conducted an analysis of who took part in Work Fit and found that we had attracted the participation of a substantial amount of men across the age range, added Dr Litchfield. This would seem to indicate that we got the language and the messaging correct.

BT has always had an ethos of being a caring company and so the Work Fit programme is nothing new in that respect, said Dr Litchfield. What is new and different is that we tried to communicate that, in fact, Work Fit isnt about the company doing things for its people. We didnt want to be seen as taking responsibility away from individuals.

Work Fit was about the company creating the right environment through providing education and information to help people to help themselves.

Down to the individual

That is a fundamental when it comes to making changes to improve ones health. The individual has to want to do it. They have to want to make certain changes and do things differently. The company undoubtedly has a role. Society has a role in helping it to happen, but at the end of the day it has to be the individual that does it and thats how Work Fit was designed, said Dr Litchfield.

Good for employees and good for the company, the Work Fit programme is a strong example of a company being highly resourceful when it comes to looking after its people. Recent research by corporate reputation research company, Globescan found that treating employees well was considered, globally, as being one the most important things a company can do to be seen as socially responsible.

While Work Fit deliberately concentrated on nutrition and exercise, BTs latest employee health initiative, Quit with Work Fit, which began on March 8th , National Stop Smoking Day, focuses on smoking cessation.

We didnt want to tackle smoking at the same time as nutrition and exercise because the messages are different, as are the target audiences, explained Dr Paul Litchfield. We also felt that by trying to do everything at the same time, it would put people off. Thered have been a risk they would have thought thats nothing to do with me because Im not a smoker. So we purposely ran the smoking campaign after the nutritional one.

The number of people in society who smoke is around 25 to 30 per cent of the population and thats the sort of level that prevails at BT. Thats also a smaller target population than we aimed for with the first Work Fit and of course the messages of the campaign will be geared towards helping people to stop smoking.

But, continues Dr Litchfield, this programme will be about giving smokers access to resources and pointing them in the right direction. So, just like in the original Work Fit, we are helping our people to help themselves. We dont make them give up smoking they do it themselves if they want to. We hopefully make it easier for them to make that decision.

Shift in attitude

Concluded Dr Litchfield, The Work Fit programmes are enjoying enormous popularity. I would suggest this is largely to do with the move away from the more paternalistic attitudes that may have been deployed within health promotions of the past. For companies with social responsibility ambitions Id recommend that stressing individual responsibility and pushing the helping you to help yourself message as an effective route towards success in looking after your people.