Added: 01/05/2007 |
Back to the gym again? Take the Gyms with YouThe end of the holiday season means many things: Gift returns for retailers, left over meals for supper, and the highest enrollments for the local gyms! Are you one of those faces that are only seen during the first quarter of the year? Does your contract not exceed ninety days because you know that by then you'll be back into your old habits? Maybe you need another solution!
Exercise and diet are becoming a large part of our every day lives…and I don’t just mean as an exercise regimen that would be nice to be able to stick to. Too many employers these days recognize that even members of gyms with top notch exercise equipment aren’t making the grade. Keeping in mind what their employees do for a living, some employers are using a merit system in order to encourage their employees to loose weight and become healthy. This is not only a reward system, but a demerit system that, if goals are not met within a certain time frame determined by the employer, can result in terminations of employees.
An example of this is the local sheriff’s office. The SO, as it’s called, has implemented a program to put ALL employees, dispatch, jail house workers, and officers on a system that encourages weight loss. If the employee looses the amount of weight at the end of the year that was projected for him/her to loose at the beginning of the year, they earn an extra week of paid vacation. If, however, the employee gains weight, they actually loose a week’s vacation that they’ve already earned through tenure. This applies to male and female alike. Now, you say, if the employee is already fit and healthy and doesn’t need to loose weight…then what? Well, the answer is in the numbers! If this type of employee maintains a healthy weight, they also earn the extra week’s of vacation. If they become unhealthy and gain an unacceptable amount of weight, they loose a week they’ve earned through tenure.
This may not seem fair to some and to those smokers who recently lost their civil right to smoke in public places, this may in fact be a downright outrage! However, the restaurants and other organizations have realized that with our free will exercised instead of our waistlines, we have chosen to over indulge in all things. This, the employers argue, keep people in their jobs because of tenure and not because the employee does a great job on the road as an officer, at the station because their a good dispatcher and at the helm of the jail just because they can man-handle inmates. An employee’s health is directly related to their ability to do a good job at their job in this line of thinking. Some may argue, but it really doesn’t matter. This is the way society is ebbing and flowing right now. You either go with the flow or loose the weight at gyms with fancy equipment and high overhead or you can get down on the floor and get back to the basics with push ups and sit ups. The choice is yours, work or not work?
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