From Boardroom to Locker Room

Corporate fitness programs have employees in a sweat

What do Chase Manhattan Chairman David Rockefeller, McGraw-Hill Vice President Wesley Fraser and boardrooms full of other executives, male and female, have in common? Several times a week they pull on sneakers and sweatshirts to spend an hour or so in the company gym, puffing on a jogging track or pumping away on a stationary bicycle. Employer-sponsored exercise is fast becoming an integral part of the workaday world, as businesses recognize that their financial health can depend on the physical health of key employees as well as on the condition of plant and equipment.

More than 400 major corporations, and uncounted small ones, offer employees an exercise plan. Most schemes are designed to keep top-level executives in working order, but many firms have begun exhorting even rank-and-file employees to get out there and sweat.

Company fitness programs range from simply subsidizing employee membership in the local Y.M.C.A. to constructing elaborate exercise centers. The Mitre Corp., a nonprofit engineering firm, sank $10,000 into equipping the basement of its Bedford, Mass., headquarters with showers, lockers, rowing machines and weight-lifting gadgets. Xerox Corp. runs seven exercise centers; the most lavish overlooks the Potomac River at the company's International Center for Training and Management in Leesburg, Va. The $3.5 million facility includes a putting green, a soccer field, a swimming pool, two gyms, four tennis courts, two racketball courts, a weight-lifting room and 2,300 wooded acres where joggers can gambol, often in the company of deer.

When building their own facilities proves impractical, many firms pay workers part or all of the cost of enrolling in independent health clinics. Among them are Los Angeles' Atlantic Richfield Plaza Fitness Center, with twelve corporate clients, and Manhattan's Cardio-Fitness Center, which has Celanese Corp., Dun & Bradstreet Co., Time Inc. and the National Hockey League among its 35 company supporters. The centers offer the latest in rowing, cycling, jogging and weight-lifting gadgets. They provide members with freshly laundered exercise clothing, private lockers and hairdryers.

Cardio-Fitness even has "panic buttons" on the walls, so a guest can summon help in case of emergency. (The buttons have not been used in the year and a half the center has been open.) Cardio-Fitness's 1,150 members, some of whom arrive with bodyguards in chauffeured limousines, pay $525 a year, usually picked up by an employer.

The activities at such centers are aimed more at strengthening the cardiovascular system than building muscles. After having their medical history reviewed, taking a series of tests (including a treadmill "stress test"), and having body fat measured, participants are given a set of individual goals. Clients are carefully monitored as they go through their paces.

Promoting worker perspiration, firms have found, is as much a matter of self-interest as of paternalism. American business loses an estimated $3 billion every year because of employee health problems. Companies find that fitness programs more than pay for themselves in reduced absenteeism, disability and lateness, and in greater productivity. Besides, medical evidence linking regular exercise and a healthy heart is growing. Last year, for instance, Stanford University's Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger Jr. found that of 17,000 Harvard graduates he observed over 15 years, those who swam, ran and otherwise regularly engaged in vigorous exercise, suffered fewer heart attacks than those who did not.

Exercise programs also give employees a chance to work off job and family frustrations. Chicago's Excello Press began a fitness plan a year ago after an irate pressman hurled his lunch pail into a press, causing $30,000 in damage. Now, says Excello President Gary Feldmar, "workers have a much more relaxed attitude. They can slam a racketball against the wall and pretend they're hitting their wife's head, or mine, and release tensions in a heal thy way."

Of course, not every employee is thrilled at spending the lunch hour sweating and straining, even at company expense. Only a fraction of eligible employees take advantage of the programs. Xerox's Leesburg facility is used by barely a third of the 180,000 people who yearly train at the center. New York's Cardio-Fitness reports a 15% dropout rate. Says one former client: "I find it mind-bendingly boring. I hate taking another shower and then putting on sweaty underwear. I hate spending an hour of my time jumping around over there."

For most participants, however, a corporate fitness program is the hottest perk since the executive washroom. "I feel better and it helps my whole attitude," says Mort Roman, a manager for Atlantic Richfield in Los Angeles. Vance Foreman, chief engineer at Xerox, credits his firm's plan with cutting his hypertension medication from three pills a day to one. Says he: "Before I'd change jobs, I'd ask an employer if he has a gym."

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