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What are corporate gym memberships?
A corporate gym membership is a discounted or subsidised gym membership offered by an organisation to its employees as a workplace benefit. Employers often negotiate bulk discounts with gyms, making the membership cheaper per person, and may pay for the membership in part or in full. The aim is to improve employee health and wellbeing, boost morale, and increase productivity.
What schemes are available, and how can they be offered to staff?
Corporate fitness plans fall into several categories, including on-site gyms, negotiated reduced rates with local or national gym operators that are passed on to staff, multi-gym platforms, and simply providing employees with a cash allowance to purchase their own gym membership.
What are the cost implications?
With budget or heavily subsidised corporate deals, employees could pay as little as £5 per month under some corporate wellness/discount schemes. General corporate‑gym membership ranges can run between £20 and £80 per month per employee, depending on the gym type and level of access.
Discounts are available to employers when purchasing in bulk, based on the size of the organisation, with the option to pay monthly or annually, with some schemes advertising up to 25% off standard gym membership rates for employees under a corporate plan. Local gyms with multiple branches or chains tend to be more open to corporate pricing negotiation than small independent gyms. The rise of budget gyms, such as PureGym and The Gym Group, makes it more affordable for employers to offer an employee benefit that has real value.
Are there any tax or legal issues?
HMRC generally considers this to be a ‘benefit-in-kind’ which requires the employer to pay Class 1A national insurance contributions on behalf of the employee, while the employee also has to pay income tax on their benefits-in-kind. The employer can deduct the cost as a business expense for corporation tax purposes, reducing its profits.
There are legal considerations regarding gym membership contracts, including minimum terms, timeframes for cancelling a contract and exit clauses, as well as gathering and storing sensitive information relating to an employee’s physical and mental health via mobile apps.
What are the current market trends or developments?
In Hussle’s study of gym goers, published in September 2023, 63.1% named discounted gym access as their number one choice of corporate benefit. In spite of this, the same survey revealed that only 22.4% said their employer currently offers discounted gym access as a benefit. Meanwhile, the Drewberry Employee benefits and workplace satisfaction survey, published in October 2024, found that 57% of employees said they want perks for health and wellbeing, including corporate gym memberships.
Employers are highly focused on cost-effective options when choosing corporate gym memberships, primarily because these options offer a strong return on investment (ROI) through improved employee health, productivity, and retention, which ultimately saves the organisation money.
Gymflex offers savings of up to 40% on memberships at over 3,600 gyms, leisure centres, and studios through a salary sacrifice scheme, while MyGymDiscounts (via Epassi) runs a popular discount scheme that gives employees access to over 4,000 fitness facilities across the UK and Ireland at a reduced rate, with savings of up to 25%. Hussle has a more flexible option that offers multi-gym passes that can be provided as an employer benefit. The company has thousands of partner gyms across the UK and allows users to stop and start with a click.
A growing number of employers are using wellness platforms, rather than tying staff to one gym, and can use platforms like Pluxee or BHN Extras to offer gym discounts as part of their overall benefits package.
Where corporate gym memberships alone are underused or mismatched with employees’ lives, employers are broadening the concept of ‘wellness benefit’ to include on-site or in-office facilities, giving staff easy or low-commitment ways to stay active.
Who are the main providers and what types of schemes do they offer?
The UK’s leading corporate gym membership providers include Classpass, David Lloyd Leisure, Gymflex, MyGymDiscounts (via Epassi), Hussle, Nuffield Health, PureGym, The Gym Group, Virgin Active, Vitality and Wellhub. Together they offer a mix of subsidised or discounted memberships, flexible multi-site access, wellbeing programmes, onsite or digital fitness services, and incentives tied to employee engagement or health-improvement goals, giving employers options ranging from premium club access to affordable nationwide coverage
