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Gaining senior staff reinforcement is vital to the success of a physical activity plan.

Whether the changes you’d like to make involve the work environment, overall policies or specific programs, successfully launching your ideas depends on upper management reinforcement.

Support from senior staff is critical for three reasons:

• You need their support to involve employees in a workplace plan.
• When senior staff pays attention to and supports initiative, workers also view the initiative as worthwhile.
• Upper Management has the authority to give work time and money to support the initiative.

It’s valuable to keep senior staff involved throughout a physical exercise initiative, but at three points you’ll need reinforcement for:

• An overall concept, including a go-ahead to assess what staff members want to do within the limitations of your workplace environment.
• A detailed plan (based on the assessment above) coupled with resources to carry out the plan.
• Evaluating the initiative to better it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the initiative.

Approaching Senior Management

Before addressing management to gain initial support for promoting physical activity during work, do your homework.

• Prepare a employer case clearly outlining how the employer will advance by promoting physical exercise during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate advantages of physical exercise and the advantages of being active during the workday.
• Present some cursory ideas about what the program could include. See the Success Stories and Ideas sections on this website to highlight what other workplaces have done.

Expect questions such as the following from senior staff:

• How will this help our organization?
• How can we innervate staff members to take part?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now whether or not this was a good use of time and resources?

Ask managers about the sorts of activities they would support. Often managers have ideas of their own they would like to see acted on to improve the workplace.

Remember to include middle managers when gaining support for your initiative. They can be very helpful when you need volunteers to lead teams in corporate physical activity challenges.