104 | SEPTEMBER 2019 Women’s Health
few employees at the Technogym Village in
Cesena, Italy, are setting out for a lunchtime
run on a sunny Thursday in June. Not that
they need to step outside the 150,000m 2
‘wellness campus’ to get their daily fitness
fix – the facility is widely regarded as the
healthiest head office on the planet. Through
the main entrance and to the right is the
T-Wellness Centre – the staff gym and
spa. It also doubles as the stylish fitness
equipment manufacturer’s showroom.
Spread over two wood-and-glass storeys
and looking out over a verdant park, the
salon-cum-gym is bountifully stocked with
machines, free weights and rigs. Taking
advantage of the equipment – and their two-
hour lunch break – employees hop on indoor
bikes, treadmills and rowers to compete
with colleagues, their scores broadcast on
big screens. Technogym employs full-time
personal trainers, but the company
encourages other employees to become
‘wellness ambassadors’ by fronting classes.
The Village’s facility manager teaches tai chi.
After working out, staff dine in the
T-Wellness Restaurant, where a locally
sourced three-course lunch – for example,
cod fillet with parsley and lemon, passatelli
(a variety of pasta native to northern Italy)
with tomato and rocket and grilled courgette- costs €1. This nominal fee is imposed to
dissuade employees from taking too much
food and wasting it. Outside the restaurant,
workers sip espressos at standing tables,
which may be less of a wellness thing than
simply traditionally Italian, but every bit of
physical activity helps. In the offices, they
sit on ‘wellness balls’; on the factory floor,
they bask in natural light. Production ceases
an hour early during the summer so people
have time to go to the beach.
In effect, the Technogym Village is a giant
exhibit – a tantalising taste of a wellness
utopia. ‘We’re not just selling machines,’ says
Technogym PR director Enrico Manaresi,
right-hand man to company president
Nerio Alessandri. He’s not wrong – the
month WH visits, Alessandri is on the cover
of the Italian edition of Forbes
magazine, curling a branded
dumbbell. ‘We’re promoting
wellness as a lifestyle.’
Technogym is also selling it
to 6,000 other companies and
counting: everyone from Ferrari,
Mercedes and Nike to Adidas
and even Coca-Cola has bought
in. Manaresi won’t reveal how
much of what Technogym offers
is purchased by corporations,
rather than gyms or individuals,
but he says that this side of the
business is ‘significant’, ‘growing ’
and ‘has huge potential’.Human resources
The culture of workplace
wellness has its roots in the
US, where employers bear much
of the cost of healthcare and
have embraced any measures
that might reduce insurance
premiums. On the West Coast,
where exercise is almost a
fashion statement, the Silicon
Valley tech giants have been the
trendsetters. Google’s Search
Inside Yourself Leadership
Institute teaches mindfulness
and ‘emotional intelligence’ to
its employees. Opened in 2017,
Apple Park, the shiny $5 billion
iCampus in California, boasts
a $74 million fitness and
wellness centre spanning
100,000ft2 and a yoga room
covered in specially distressed
stone from a quarry in Kansas.
But, as with most health
trends, workplace wellness has
crossed the pond. Currently
under construction, Google’s
£1bn London headquarters will
house a swimming pool, sports
hall and rooftop running track.
And, according to the Reward &
Employee Benefits Association,
nearly half of UK companies
now have a ‘clearly defined
wellbeing strategy’, up from
less than a third two years ago.
It’s not just corporate giants,
either: the Federation of Small
Businesses launched a campaign
with Public Health England and
mental health charity Mind in
2017 to improve the health of
the UK workforce.
‘Companies are realising the
cost that ill health is having on
their workforce,’ says Steven
Ward, CEO† of non-profit group
UKActive, which has kettlebells,
spin bikes and, thankfully,
showers at its London offices.‘More and more businesses are taking workplace
wellness seriously,’ he adds. Indeed, it has become an
industry in its own right: UKActive recently bestowed
its Workplace Wellbeing of the Year award on
Wellworking, a company that supplies healthy office
furniture. The Global Wellness Institute values the
workplace wellness market at £33bn.
That figure is dwarfed by the cost of workplace illness,
which a government paper puts at £100bn a year in the
UK alone. One in three working-age people have a long-
term health condition that affects their work, while
a fifth have a mental health condition. Businesses are
‘rightly focused on growth, productivity and delivering
a return on their investments’, says the paper, but
‘investing in workplace inclusivity, health and wellbeing
is critical to these goals’. With a third of our lives spent
at work, it’s also a way to save on NHS budgets.A balancing act
Done properly, workplace wellness can deliver healthy
returns. The Harvard Business Review estimated that
the return on ‘comprehensive, well-run’ programmes
can be as high as six to one, meaning for every £1 spent
on wellness, businesses save £6 by reducing absenteeism.
And the proven ability of exercise to ward off stress and
depression, while boosting energy and cognitive function,
should make prioritising it a no-brainer. The problem is
that money allocated to boardroom yoga classes isn’t
always well spent. The University of Illinois’s 2018W
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