Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003014071
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUS1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Elizabeth Spayd The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's right, weigh. As in body weight. Excess fat.
That may sound like an odd issue for a company to take up with its employees until you consider this: By turning couch potatoes into health nuts, Tenneco has trimmed millions of dollars from its medical bill and reduced by thousands the number of times employees call in sick.
By any number of measures, Tenneco's fitness program is proving a sort of corporate cure-all for the problems that ail its top executives. Established nearly eight years ago, the massive complex adjacent to the company's Houston headquarters has become a showcase for corporations that need to be convinced of what Tenneco has known for years: healthy workers make better workers.
According to Tenneco's exhaustive studies, employees who visit the fitness center at least twice a week file about half as many health claims as do "non-active" employees. An active female, for example, files about $700 in claims a year, an inactive female about $1,350.
Tenneco also thinks it has found a strong link between top performers on the job and top performers on the track. Its studies found that active employees, on average, tend to receive higher job-performance evaluations from their supervisors than do employees who get little or no exercise.
With absenteeism the story is much the same. Employees who exercise miss an average of 3.5 days per year; for inactive employees it's five days a year.
"That may not sound like much of a difference, but it adds up when you multiply it out over a number of years," says Edward Bernacki, vice president of health and safety.
Tenneco likes to multiply things out. It can tell you that last year employees burned 17.5 million calories in the fitness center, or about 5,007 pounds. In an average month, they logged 32,000 miles on the glass-enclosed two-lane track that rings the center. That's 384,000 miles per year, 2.5 million since the center opened in 1982.
For Tenneco and the 3,000-plus other companies that have opened fitness centers, there is always the chicken-and-egg question of whether physical activity actually improves job performance or whether people who are inherently better performers tend to be attracted to exercise.
"From my own experience, I find that people who tend to be successful in one phase of their life, such as having the discipline to work out, tend to be successful in many phases of their life," says William Baun, manager of the fitness center. "They probably just feel good about themselves."
Baun likes to recount the story of a low-level data-systems employee who came sauntering into the center every year complaining that he wanted to lose weight and quit smoking. Finally he did - and in the process gained enough confidence to leave Tenneco for a shot at starting his own business.
No one is required to use the fitness center, but tales of boosted enthusiasm like that one have committed Tenneco to boosting attendance. To do that, it employs every motivational strategy Braun can think of.
There are Weight Loss Olympics where employees gather with a group of their heftier peers and compete against other teams to see who can lose the most weight over a given period. There are publicly displayed boards where employees can log their swimming, running and countless other achievements.
There is a monthly newsletter that trumpets fitness successes. And there is an elaborate computer system where employees can track their weight, cholesterol and blood pressure against their year- or month-ago levels. The bounty is never any larger than a T-shirt or gym bag, but Baun has learned that the reward doesn't have to be financial. His best sales tool is someone who has lost 20 pounds, he says.
Against its competitors, Tenneco has done well in its attempt to build a healthier work force. Roughly 40 percent of the 2,000 employees at its Houston headquarters use the program regularly, according to Baun. That is well above the 10 percent to 15 percent of eligible employees who use most corporate fitness centers, according to Charles Estey of the Center for Corporate Health Promotion in Reston.
Over time, Tenneco is hoping to attract more health-conscious workers with a corporate culture that thrives on and encourages fitness.
Among entry-level employees, it appears to be working. Bernacki reports that the turnover rate for clerical workers has declined in recent years, a phenomenon the company attributes to its free fitness center.
"If you're a top executive, a fitness club isn't going to make a difference," says Bernacki. "But if you're a clerical worker it's a nice perk."
by CNB