As the rest of the nation boldly marches to the gym this January, one company is giving new meaning to the adage "no pain, no gain". Pharmacy Channel, a US-UK venture which provides instore digital advertising across a 400-strong network of independent pharmacies, has booked its entire UK staff a "corporate healthcheck" and is offering a 25% subsidy to those who wish to continue with a personal fitness trainer.
"We're quite a healthy company," explains Nainish Bapna, Pharmacy Channel's CEO. "The whole company ran the New York marathon (2004), for example.
"Now, we're putting our money where our mouth is - we've done the marathon so we want to work on from there. Everyone is going to have a health check and get their blood pressure and fitness levels checked, so we will all know how healthy we really are.
"And I'm sure we'll all get a bit competitive to see who's the fittest person here!"
Bapna says that offering these staff benefits will boost staff morale and aid recruitment and retention. "We're a small company and what attracts staff to small companies is the atmosphere, the entrepreneurial spirit, being at decision-making point. You don't have to go through committees and it's an environment where we all care for each other. We want to make sure that all our staff are well and healthy."
The emphasis on personal fitness and wellbeing springs from working in the health as well as the media sectors, Bapna says. "We're straddling two spheres: one is the advertising world where image is everything - you've got to look good, wear the best clothes and have the best hair - but it's very much on the surface. The other sphere is health where the inside is everything, so we need to take care of ourselves in and out and stay fit and healthy."
But won't some staff resent being forced to undergo medical checks and being pressurised into higher levels of physical exercise? Bapna says the personal fitness training is 100% optional and can be customised according to each of the 15 UK staff members' wishes.
"Not everyone in our company is the fittest person around - but there's quite a bit of peer pressure. Everyone needs to work off benchmarks, they need to know where they are and what the targets are they are working for."
The idea of offering subsidised personal fitness training came from a staff member.
"One person suggested running the NY marathon and it snowballed from there. We never saw it as a purely motivational tool, rather to make sure everyone did something they enjoyed and got healthy.
"Then somebody suggested doing something with fitness trainers rather than gyms. So we sent them out to do some research in the area and they looked at NRPT (National Register of Personal Trainers) and www.fitnesstrainers.com and then they came across nexstep."
Nexstep provides a vetted list of fully qualified fitness trainers in the London area. It offers closely supervised training programmes and comprehensive health checks for corporate and personal customers alike with an emphasis on convenience.
"Nexstep is a much stronger proposition for a company," says Bapna. "You've got one point of contact who can do everything for you. So you can try a trainer out and then change if that person is not working for you. When it's a matter of your health you always go on referrals and the great thing about nexstep is that its staff have audited everyone on its books - they've met the person, told them what to expect and they've taught them minimum levels of customer service. We're a customer-facing organisation, so for us it's very important."
Until now, companies have offered staff complimentary or subsidised gym membership in recognition of the benefits of lower absenteeism and stress levels of those who stay fit and healthy. The Confederation of British Industry estimates the cost of absenteeism to be £11bn a year with employees taking an average of eight sick days off work annually. Of those, the Health and Safety Executive believes that half are stress related.
Nexstep hopes to persuade businesses that personal fitness training is more effective in many cases due to the motivation and discipline provided through the personal relationship with the trainer. The company participated in the consultation ahead of the recent public health white paper and is pleased some of its ideas on the integration of fitness trainers into mainstream healthcare have been adopted.
The health secretary, John Reid, went on to announce that those wishing to improve their lifestyle should be given access to advice on exercise and diet within the NHS.
Pharmacy Channel is also banking on this approach. "If you get free gym membership, you're less likely to go than if you pay for it," says Bapna. "In any case, I'm not the world's biggest fan of a gym. They are very impersonal and what you do is prescribed. I don't like to get healthy in an enclosed environment with recycled air. With personal training, some really fit person is coming to your door once a week - you're going to get motivated. You don't want to let them down once you build that personal relationship."
And how much is all this going to cost Pharmacy Channel? Surely it works out more expensive than a corporate gym plan? "We're talking about spending between £300 and £400 a year. Of course, there's buy-in from the staff too. The staff will contribute a lot, but we've found that when people pay for things themselves they assign a much higher value to it.
"We expect staff will do one personal training session a week for most of the year but some will do more and some less, it's always great when you give people more control. So we're offering around 25% for up to 40 lessons in the year, with the subsidy rising if they do more lessons as an incentive. We get VAT back so it works out at around £30 a session for us. Our staff ranges from just out of university to about 40 years old. The older ones are more for it. That's the age you really don't want to go to the gym - you want the fresh air."
