Have you heard about the CEO Pledge? It’s a campaign promoted by the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA) to encourage CEOs to recognize physical activity as an important driver of employee health and business performance. In other words, it’s a great opportunity for health clubs to connect with corporate clients.
The idea is that company leaders promise to make their employees’ health and wellness — and their own health and wellness — a priority by providing opportunities and resources for physical activity before, during, or after the workday. They agree to implement at least six strategies from a list of suggested strategies to create a workplace culture of physical activity. The list of strategies is broken into three categories — behavioral, educational, and environmental/policy — and participants are encouraged to choose strategies from each category. Some of the suggested strategies include “organize onsite fitness classes,” “reimburse employees for purchases of fitness equipment or physical activity-related programs,” and “create an onsite fitness area or reimburse/subsidize the cost of an offsite fitness center membership.”
This is good news for fitness facilities, particularly because the campaign is pretty ambitious — its goal is to get every CEO in the United States to take the pledge. Why not make it easier for them to do so? Now would be a great time to reach out to companies in your area, asking if they’ve heard about the pledge and are willing to take it, informing them about it if they don’t already know, and offering special deals to organizations whose CEOs sign up.
While you’re at it, it might be a good time to review your corporate outreach program in general. Do you have one? Have you considered how corporate sales could positively impact your facility, and whether you have the infrastructure to support such sales? If you already have a corporate outreach program in place, is it robust enough? Have you kept up to date on the latest workplace fitness programs, read the studies about physical activity in the workplace, understood the issues, and come up with strong sales pitches?
With the CEO Pledge campaign under way, there’s an opportunity in front of you. Polish up your connections to corporate clients and knock on the doors of those CEOs getting ready to sign the pledge.