Winston Salem WellnessWinston Salem Wellness – Winston Salem Health Promotion

Gaining upper management reinforcement is essential to the success of a physical activity program.

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

Support from upper management is vital for three reasons:

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

It’s valuable to keep senior staff involved throughout a physical exercise program, but at three points you’ll need support for:

• An central concept, including a go-ahead to assess what workers 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.
• Evaluating the program to improve it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the program.

Approaching Senior Leadership

Before going to senior staff to gain initial support for promoting physical exercise during the workday, do your homework.

• Prepare a company case clearly outlining how the company will profit by promoting physical exercise during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate advantages of physical exercise and the advantages of being active during work.
• Present some general ideas about what the program could 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 senior staff:

• How will this help our company?
• How can we innervate 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 good use of time and resources?

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

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