Advantages of an Office Gym for Employee Health

With the current COVID-19 crisis, offices are getting more concerned about employee health. This situation often gives rise to a range of health activities in an office. These activities often lead to many aspects of the workplace, such as an office gym and rightfully so.

In today’s day and age, a healthy workforce is vital and corporate wellness centers help maintain that. A study by Treadmill Reviews stated that 77% of the employees would work out more if provided with an office gym in working hours.

Keeping in view this need for employee health with the current COVID-19 crises, here are some advantages and other related aspects of an Office Gym for Employee Health.

Let’s start this off with the basics.

What is a Gym?

A Gym or Gymnasium is a place to participate in activities that help maintain a healthy lifestyle. These activities are workout sessions with trainers. A typical gym will include trainers and workout equipment. Today, these wellness centers can be either indoors or outdoors.

Given the fitness conscious world we are living in, a wellness center has loads of advantages today. Let’s move forward by looking at a few of these.

Advantages of an Office Gym

1. Reduces Absenteeism

Offering an Office Gym means promoting employee health. This healthy lifestyle makes your employees fit. Having a fit lifestyle reduces their health risks and illness, resulting in reduced absenteeism. Reduced absenteeism also ends up helping in lowering employee turnover rates.

2. Reduce Workplace Stress

Work can be stressful at times. It harms not only the health of the employee but also employee satisfaction. By implementing a gym in the office, you can help employees release this workplace stress.

Working out at the gym releases norepinephrine hormones. It results in reduced stress, enhanced mood, and better brain function.

3. Job Satisfaction

When an employee is less stressed, he/she is more comfortable with the working environment. Being less stressed adds up to an employee’s job satisfaction as well. Also, a corporate wellness center shows that an organization cares about the well being of its employees.

This fact makes the employees respect employers even more.

4. Reduce Healthcare Costs

Promoting a healthy lifestyle at the workplace results in reduced illness. When your employees are healthy, they don’t fall prey to diseases which results in reduced healthcare costs.

Also, fewer illnesses mean they can stay at the office and increase productivity.

5. Employee Motivation

Corporate gym membership also acts as a perk that boosts employee motivation. This boost in motivation has a positive reflection on the employee’s job satisfaction.

6. Better Sleep Cycle

Adequate sleep is essential for a person’s health. If your employees suffer from lousy sleeping habits, it will harm their health and work. Regular exercises help in stabilizing sleeping patterns and aid in better employee health.

7. Team Building

Having a team gather outside the office is always an excellent team building opportunity. In this case, an office gym is a perfect example to capitalize on team building. Working out together brings out a sense of camaraderie, which helps employees connect better.

It helps them form better bonds and friendships outside of work.

8. Improved Image

Having a gym in the office will also boost an employer’s image in the minds of its employees. Any benefit that an employer hands out always have a positive impact on employees. With happy employees, it doesn’t take much to spread the word around of a company’s goodwill and image.

These are some of the most notable advantages of an office gym. Now, let’s get to the eight essentials and some cloud-based wellness apps for a corporate wellness center.

Essentials of an Office Gym

1. Trainers

First of all, your office gym requires professional trainers. Working out without proper supervision can have drastic negative impacts. Having professional trainers helps reduce these negative impacts. Besides, it also promotes the right way of exercising.

2. Indoor Cycling:

Indoor cycling is necessary and useful in every gymnasium. Cycling helps improve muscular endurance and reduce stress level. Other than these, it is also an excellent example of cardiovascular activity.

It is for these reasons why your corporate gym must have provisions for indoor cycling.

3. Yoga Mats

Yoga in the workplace prepares your employees with a positive mindset for challenges ahead. This helps release stress and fosters peace in life. It is for these reasons why employers must promote yoga in the workplace. To promote yoga in your office, you must have proper yoga Mats.

4. Foam Rollers

Most employees suffer from bad posture while working. To counter this, foam rollers are brilliant for improving posture, flexibility, and mobility. These help in the myofascial release by rolling over the knotted together collagen fibers. Thus, foam rollers are an essential ingredient in your corporate wellness center.

5. Training Walls

Training walls can incorporate many exercising in a small space, thereby saving money and space. It can accommodate strength-based exercises, climbing, posture, etc. For its excellent cost and space-saving measures, it is a brilliant addition to an office gymnasium.

6. Weights

Weights for strength training is vital for your corporate wellness center. These help the millennials gain strength and confidence in an environment. It is for these reasons why you must have weights in the office gym.

7. Treadmills

These are a bare necessity in every gm. Treadmill exercises are beneficial for the heart, diabetics, losing weight, etc. It is one of the bare essentials of every fitness center and a must-have in your wellness center.

8. Boxing Bag

Work comes with a lot of frustrations. This frustration must always have a healthy release. Boxing Bags help release this frustration while promoting exercising at the same time. The boxing bag exercises also help in core stability, coordination, stamina, endurance, etc.

Cloud-Based apps to Compliment an Office Gym

Apart from an office gym, you must also have various wellness apps to ensure employee health. Some of these Fitness Apps are as follows.

1. Yoga App

Work-life often incorporates a lot of stress. So, your employees must do everything possible to handle this problem. One alternative is to do yoga. Even short yoga sessions can help release stress.

One example of a yoga app with sessions that work well at an office desk is Yoga Studio.

2. Workout App

Workout Apps are a great help for fitness enthusiasts at the office. These apps come with various tutorials on workout routines to suit different needs.

One example of a workout app for office use is the Workout Trainer. Workout Trainer has different desk-based workouts designed for working individuals.

3. Meditation App

Meditation is a healthy activity practiced for ages. It helps your employers restore peace into their lives amidst the stress.

One example of a meditation app for office use is the Insight Timer. Insight timer has short guided meditation sessions that help employees release office stress.

4. Corporate Wellness App

A Corporate Wellness App encourages healthy living with better employee engagement. It achieves this through challenges with leaderboards wherein the winner gets an attractive reward.

One such example of a Corporate Wellness App is Vantage Fit- An Employee and Corporate Wellness App. Vantage Fit has an activity tracker, calorie tracker, games, points, etc. These, along with the other useful features make Vantage Fit an all-in-one corporate wellness app.

Conclusion

Employees are a company’s biggest asset. It is only safe to assume that as long as your employees are healthy, your organization is healthy. A study by the International Labor Organization estimates 2.3 million people worldwide fall prey to work-related health risks every year.

By having an office gym, you can reduce this figure and ensure your employee’s health to a considerable extent. It not only keeps your employees healthy but also boosts productivity. Other than this, it also has positive effects on employee satisfaction, employee engagement, corporate wellness program, etc.

Keeping these points in view, we hope your office gym gets built and upgraded soon.