Aiming to boost productivity? Try gym for workers, experts say

Physically active employees can also lower health care costs for employers.
CORAOPOLIS, Pa. (AP) -- You might be forgiven for raising an eyebrow when employees at GlaxoSmithKline in Moon Township tell you how hard they work.
Listen to them talk about the on-site, fully equipped, trainer-staffed fitness center, the cafeteria with entrees such as meatloaf with tomato and mushroom gravy, the ice cream socials, the midday aerobics classes, the walking teams that scoot around the building during working hours, and you just might think these folks have got it made.
They do have it good, employees say. But they also work very, very hard, for very long hours, at very tough jobs.
What the perks do
All the perks, far from distracting them from their jobs, only feed their passion to do their jobs well.
"I look at it as productivity," said Mark Saunders, senior marketing manager at GlaxoSmithKline, who uses the gym regularly for strength workouts. "I'm more productive and creative because I work out here. It really makes you energetic and sharp. Especially in winter, this keeps my engine going."
Scientists and business people think he's right. Research has shown that physically active employees are more productive and help lower employers' health care costs.
Researchers at the University of Michigan who studied 23,500 healthy General Motors employees found that annual health care costs averaged $2,300 for sedentary normal-weight employees and $3,000 for sedentary obese employees. But costs for physically active obese employees dropped $300 to $400 a year.
Obese employees have more difficulty getting along with co-workers, and miss significantly more work days, according to another study, in the January 2004 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Physically fit workers, by contrast, do more, better quality work.
GlaxoSmithKline opened its on-site fitness center when it moved into a new building in Moon Township about two years ago. A British multinational health care company, GlaxoSmithKline's consumer health care business is based in Moon, where it employs about 500.
About the center
GlaxoSmithKline bought the equipment, and contracts with Falls Church, Va.-based L & amp;T Health and Fitness to run the center. Employees pay $25 a month, through payroll deduction, to use the center; about 30 percent are members. It's a break-even proposition for the company, Hrynewich said.
Besides a full range of cardiovascular machines and weights, and a full locker room, the fitness center also offers daily classes, in step aerobics or body sculpting, for example.
Last winter, the gym sponsored a Winter Weight Busters program, with 17 teams of five people each competing to see who could lose the most weight. They lost a combined total of 736 pounds, despite the sabotage efforts of teams that sent boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to rival teams.
Teams are competing in the current "Summer Size Your Body" to see who can be the first to walk the distance from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach, S.C. Two times around the building is one mile, and it's not uncommon to see employees making the circular trek during the day.
GlaxoSmithKline's attitude assumes employees act professionally, and do not abuse their privileges.
"We let people have the freedom to get the job done on their own terms," Hrynewich said. "You get so much more in return."
For example, the company doesn't have a problem with absenteeism; workers average fewer than three days of sick time a year. Turnover has averaged about 3 percent over the last seven to nine years.
Employees are grateful that they're given so much freedom, and respond by putting in extra hours when necessary, Saunders said.
"It is an extremely challenging place to work," the 40-year-old Saunders said. "We have to create a culture that gets the most out of people."
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