Many businesses that offer their employees health insurance today also find ways to promote employee health. And that makes perfect sense because the more fit workers are, the less likely they are to suffer from an on-the-job injury or get sick enough to require professional medical care.
Promoting worker health can take a number of different forms. It can be something as simple as offering smoking cessation programs or offering subsidies on local health club memberships. It could even involve buying fitness equipment and opening a company gym.
Investing in employee health often pays dividends down the road in the form of lower health care premiums, improved productivity, and less absenteeism due to sickness or injury.
Measuring Physical Fitness
Everybody is different so there is no one-size-fits-all way to measure physical fitness. But generally, physical fitness consists of three areas:
- Aerobic capacity or cardiovascular endurance as it relates to the heart and vascular system’s capacity to transport oxygen. People with a low aerobic capacity are at an increased risk for heart disease.
- The strength of the body’s muscles to generate force. Upper body strength and abdominal strength are critical to overall physical fitness. People with low strength are more likely to experience upper torso or lower back problems.
- Flexibility or the range of motion of the joints and muscles. People with little lower back flexibility are far more likely to experience lower back disorders.
Some jobs require minimal physical fitness standards. These include those serving in the military, police officers, and firefighters.
But all businesses can benefit by encouraging their workers to become more physically active and be concerned about their overall physical fitness.
Minimal Fitness Standards
While most companies can’t require their workers to meet minimum fitness standards, it’s often helpful to have something to compare one’s own physical fitness. One such standard is the Peace Officer Wellness Evaluation Report, also known as the POWER test.
This is the fitness test used by most police departments in the state of Illinois to measure the minimum physical fitness of their officers, including both recruits and on-the-job employees.
The POWER Test
The POWER test is composed of four components:
- Sit and Reach Test — This test involves stretching out to touch the toes or behind with extended arms from a sitting position. The score is in the inches reached on a yardstick.
- 1 Minute Sit-Up Test — This test measures how many bent leg sit-ups can be performed in one minute.
- 1 Rep Maximum Bench Press — This tests the ratio of weight pushed during a bench press divided by the body weight.
- 1.5 Mile Run — This tests how long it takes to run 1.5 miles, in minutes and seconds.
The required performance to pass each test is based on age and sex. In Illinois, many police officers are required to meet these minimum physical fitness standards annually.
While most businesses probably can’t require employees to be in as good a shape as police officers, the POWER test is a useful tool to measure personal fitness.