EC1 Collective

Get fit or be fired trying: the rise of sport at work
More companies are encouraging employees to take part in team sports

When Phil Smith, chairman of Cisco UK and Ireland, took up triathlons about 10 years ago, he had a vague ambition to challenge himself and improve his health. “It wasn’t part of any sort of plan, but I did my first and really enjoyed it.”

So he signed up for the next event, then a few more. In 2014, he represented Great Britain in the 55-59 age group in the International Triathlon Union world final. And he did the same last year in Canada, albeit in the next age group up.

The training regime, Mr Smith says, has only involved small tweaks to his daily routine. He used to wake up at 5am and “faff around”, but now he sets his alarm clock just 10 minutes earlier for a run. Inevitably, he avoids corporate entertaining excesses. “I’ve never been a massive drinker but I’m conscious of not drinking too much.” His diet has become healthier, too.

These tweaks on top of the running, swimming and cycling, over eight years, improved his fitness and helped him shift about three stone. In the process, he became an evangelist. “When I was in the office, I would talk about it.”

It set him thinking about how to corral workers from different bits of the organisation to get fitter — “to inspire people but not to scare them”. In 2016, in partnership with other companies, Cisco started its own triathlon, Leaderboard, having put on a couple of smaller events in the preceding four years.

There is a financial case for encouraging employees to get moving. According to Mr Smith, a big chunk of the private healthcare budget is spent on musculoskeletal conditions, due to sedentary work. Sporting challenges fit into broader corporate wellbeing schemes.

Such events are part of a trend for companies to encourage the fitness of their staff, which Carl Cederstrom, co-author of Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement, describes as a “shift from a work ethic to a workout ethic”.

Motivation: Phil Smith’s fitness tips

• Get to the front door The hardest bit is getting started. Do not use the excuse that you are travelling — pack your trainers or swimsuit first
  
• Do it your way but do it regularly I do my training in the early morning because I am a morning person but also so I have no excuses to put it off later
  
• Do not go crazy It is better to do 15 minutes every day than run for an hour when you are not ready
  
• Mix it up Triathlons allow you to minimise the stress on your body. A couple of days of running followed by a morning swim the next day can be tremendously healing
  
  

At one extreme is Bjorn Borg, the eponymous Swedish sportswear and underwear company. Every Friday it closes its head office for an hour of mandatory exercise for all employees. According to its website, “All employees also do physical fitness tests and set yearly personal fitness and/or health goals, which are followed up together with a personal trainer.” Its annual financial report includes the average biological age of its workforce — currently 29, three years younger than the average real age of 32.

Fitness is one aspect of corporate sports events. The social aspect is another — it is an opportunity for employees to chat, fuelled by adrenalin rather than alcohol (although inevitably thoughts turn to drinking after sweating it out all day).

For Brian Carroll, a New York-based partner at PwC who participates in the professional service company’s baseball competition, sport is a chance to meet people from unfamiliar parts of the firm. “We’ve become friends outside of work. I enjoy conversations about different challenges in the workplace.”

Torkild Thanem, a professor of management and organisation studies at Stockholm University, studied one team in an accounting firm that went running a couple of times a week together to soften the culture. It backfired, and only “reinforced the competitiveness and performance culture”.

Nick Rusling, the founder of Human Race, a company that organises corporate sporting challenges such as Leaderboard, says the “danger is that you only get the naturally fit who are keen to do [such things]”. If only the “existing fit” enter, the whole exercise can be divisive. Although, he says, the barriers tend to be psychological rather than physical so the messaging needs to be inclusive and encouraging.

Another challenge is the testosterone. David Moran, chief executive of Marco Polo events, which last year bought the teamwork event company UK Challenge from IMG, the talent management group, describes this annual corporate event which sets both mental and physical tasks over three days as a “mixture of Tough Mudder and Crystal Maze”. He admits that it has traditionally been dominated by men. Last year, the majority (just under 80 per cent) of participants were male; this year it was about two-thirds, helped by a “bit of cajoling” and the entry of five all-female teams. All-male teams, he insists, are on the way out. His ambition is to have women making up 40 per cent of participants over the next two years.

Prof Cederstrom worries that a mythology has arisen around the “workout ethic” — that being competitive on the sports field translates to the boardroom. “There’s tonnes of evidence that suggests if you work out you get healthier and more resilient”, which certainly helps people do their jobs. Yet it does not necessarily hone other qualities that might help in business. “What does it mean to be a good executive? We don’t really know.” Winston Churchill and Angela Merkel, he observes, are widely cited as good leaders, yet neither are known for their sporting prowess.