It has been nearly 10 years since the smoking ban was first introduced in England and Wales, although it is more like 25 years since employers began herding smokers into a designated area for their regular cigarette breaks. But that is exactly what they were: breaks from work. I even remember negativity towards smoking breaks from the non-smokers. “Why should they get extra breaks just to go and smoke?” But that is exactly what we did; we gave smokers extra time away from their work to go and have a cigarette. Taking just one break in the morning and one in the afternoon amounts to almost four weeks off a year.
Was there a tribal culture to those smoking breaks? Seen as good fun by those self-proclaimed cool people who routinely went off to chug on a death stick? Probably. It certainly did not encourage a culture conducive to giving up.
According to the Health and Social Care Information Centre’s Statistics on smoking, published in May 2015, There are still more adult smokers (20%) in the UK than there are gym goers (12%), which is not surprising when you consider the incentive of an extra month off work the smokers got. So how about this, why don’t we bring back these breaks: not for smoking obviously, but for exercise?
Employees who want a workout at lunchtime have to travel to the gym, get changed, work out, shower, then change again, buy their lunch and finally eat it - all within an hour. This is hardly encouraging exercise is it? Instead, let us give employees who want to work out at lunchtime an extra 20 minutes. Do we care that the smokers might moan? We could call it gym flexi-time.
It is not necessary to restrict gym flexi-time to lunch hours either, when gyms are often overloaded. Just before and after work are very busy too, which can be intimidating for employees starting their fitness journey. So we should be encouraging employees to go at the time it suits them best. That is a win-win. Employees can always make the time up earlier or later in the day.
The gym at 3pm is dreamy. Less people, more space so extra time on the equipment employees want to use.
If we are serious about preventing the continued decline of employees’ wellbeing, we need to change the perception. Embracing exercise to the same degree that we abided smoking is just a start. The culture change comes when we stop treating employee gym membership as a tick-box exercise and start giving it top billing rather than running it alongside the cinema discounts. If employers do not make the time for their employees’ fitness, then they ought to start making time for their illness instead.
While smoking in the UK has reduced by 42% since 1986, UK expenditure on tobacco has trebled to £19.4 billion in the same period according to figures from public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash). That is compared to just £4.3 billion expenditure on private and public sector gyms, based on figures from the 2015 State of the UK fitness industry report pubished by the Leisure Database Company in June 2015.
The UK has a long road ahead to choke the smoke and make the quitters fitter.
James Shillaker is xx at Gymflex
