How offices are toning up their staff fitness offerings
From kickboxing to gong baths and yoga, companies are bringing new meaning to the idea of ‘flexible working,’ finds Charlotte Lytton
Once a month, in a conference room on one of the 11 floors of Google’s London office, you will find 25 executives lying on their backs, eye masks on, drifting off to the sound waves emanating from a selection of gongs or crystal bowls. This isn’t a one-off transplanted from the green juice hinterlands of its Silicon Valley HQ, but symptomatic of the ever-blurring line between work and wellness, where businesses are racing to expand their physical and mental health offerings to employees.
In the two years since Laura Franses, who previously worked in investing at Channel 4, set up Crystal Sound Lounge, things have “definitely changed” from the days of one broken
treadmill in the basement constituting the work gym. From entire floors of super-luxe equipment at co-working spaces to companies hiring outside help to put on lunchtime HIIT or Pilates for tightly wound employees, there is a concerted effort to broaden the meaning of “flexible working”.
“We all have our theories about people not really knowing how to cope with so much technology,” Franses says of the organisations that enlist her help.
A gong bath, as the class is known, allows her frazzled clientele to “switch off their brain and reboot it so they come out energised”. Unlike classes held at other offices, such as kickboxing or yoga, “it doesn’t involve any physical activity. Everyone in the workforce can do it”.
Others, meanwhile, see their lunch break as an ideal window for working up a sweat. Stefano Iachella, a 31-yearold who works for an IT company, attends weekly crossfit-style classes in his office gym: hour-long sessions that are “really positive, as they help to build relations across teams, to reduce stress and anxiety and to increase motivation”.
Research charts a range of positive effects that exercising can have on work performance: one 2015 study found the volume of physical activity that employees carried out resulted in improved rates of mental wellbeing and productivity, while another study of three workplaces with on-site facilities in the south-west of England found “workday exercise can improve white-collar workers’ moods and self-reported performance on days when they exercise at work over days when they do not”. That mentality is in full-flow at Uncommon, a co-working space that next week opens a Well Studio at its Liverpool Street branch, with the entire eighth floor dedicated to Peloton bikes – £2,000 each, beloved of the likes of David Beckham and Leonardo Dicaprio – and meditation pods. Its research found that 92 per cent of UK office occupiers prefer “wellness-enabled buildings”. This is the case at Fora, another co-working space with sites across London and Reading, which says it is “seeing a real demand” for its on-site fitness options.
Dropbox, one of its resident companies, cited moving to the Soho branch “to make wellbeing a priority”, and has a dedicated class every week.
A cynic might question whether this fitness drive is simply an incentive for companies to make staff stay longer at the office. But James Balfour, cofounder of 1Rebel and son of Mike Balfour, who launched Fitness First, believes the trend is down to employers’ knowledge that “it results in a higher workforce retention and happier employees”.
For those unable to exercise on-site, there are other options: his boutique gym is this autumn launching the “Battle of Banks” in which the studio – corporate clients of which include Jimmy Choo, Universal and WPP – is pitting the City’s largest financial firms against each other to see whose staff complete the most classes.
Gyms are expanding work facilities, too. Balfour explains that “more and more fitness clubs are becoming lifestyle destinations”. At his studio’s six London sites, exercisers are put through punishing routines in darkened rooms – outside which are spaces with tables and charging points to “allow guests to work pre or post class [and] empower them to make the most out of their time”.
This blurring of lines between working and workouts might not suit everyone. For 36-year-old lawyer Ami Wise, the concept of in-office yoga, as per her last firm, was bizarre. “The mind frame required at work is almost the opposite of what yoga encourages,” she explains, “so I found it really difficult doing it among colleagues.”
Claire Berliner, 40, has found the reverse: “Pilates at work has been a total godsend,” she says of the sessions that Exercise in the City runs at the London Library, where she is an events manager. “I had to give up the class I’d been going to when I started this job because it became too hard to fit in around full-time work and childcare. Doing a class at work solves those problems,” Berliner explains.
On-site exercise can also help to reverse some of the physical complaints caused by desk-dwelling. Frame fitness studios has introduced Anti-desk Yoga to its timetable; instructor Zoe Sharp also holds classes at offices such as American Express and Deliciously Ella for those in need of ameliorating modern-day afflictions like crippling tech neck.
“The bigger muscle groups get tight and lazy sitting at a desk all day,” she says, adding that “we often unconsciously build up tension in the jaw, neck flexors, forehead, wrists and fingers too”, which can cause headaches and tooth grinding.
“A class specifically designed to iron out these smaller areas of tension has a really quick impact on our overall sense of wellbeing, as well as refreshing our eyes after staring at screens for hours on end.”
A sweat-drenched misstep in front of colleagues may not be the most comforting thought. But with offices’ focus on mental and physical health growing, perhaps Lycra will prove to be the great workplace leveller – and one that tones you up, too.