RISKFACTOR: How fit is your CEO?

Marathons have come a long way. You might have seen pictures of famous personalities and top bosses — Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Anil Ambani, as some examples — finishing these runs with much fa nfare. In recent times, there has been a significant trend among CEOs to participate in such endurance sports. According to some estimates, the number of S&P 1500 CEOs, who finished at least one marathon has doubled to more than 7 per cent in last 10 years, with CEOs finishing two marathons on average during this period.

Such endurance sports seem to have caught the fancy of many others and not just the CEOs. As an example, in the US alone, the number of marathon finishers has increased 20-fold in the last 40 years — from 25,000 people in the year 1976, to 300,000 in 2000 and to 550,000 in 2014. Similar trends can be observed for triathlons — 4.2 million people participated in triathlons in 2015 as compared to 2.1 million in 2011 in the US.

There are obvious health benefits of exercise and sports — especially if you consider the inactive, high-profile, or stressful lives that many of us have. We work at least 40-50 hours a week sitting at the desk or in meetings, starring at digital screens with our wrists constantly typing. According to one report, 31.1 per cent of adults worldwide, or roughly 1.5 billion people, don’t even meet the minimum recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week (about 20 minutes a day). Moreover, this inactivity epidemic has become global affecting most continents and nations (e.g., 43% of American, 35 of Europeans, 30% of Russians are estimated to be inactive). Such kind of sedentary lifestyle is not only boing, but also more dangerous that we might think. In the long run, this can lead to various health problems from minor ones such as headaches, dry eyes, repetitive stress injury (RSI) due to keyboard usage to more serious conditions such as obesity or increased risk of heart diseases.

It has been scientifically shown that sports boost work productivity — by inducing good mood and higher brain activity. Fitness improves the blood circulation and supplies the brain with more oxygen. It makes people more stress resistant and allows them to better cope with a large workload. And thankfully, we are becoming more aware of the urgency of this situation. As one manager put it, “It is not only me, going running during lunch time, in the last five years since I work at my current employer I have seen a strong increase in employees doing sports during their lunch break. In particular, it’s not the junior employees with a presumably less stressful and demanding job, who use their mornings and lunch breaks for sport, but especially higher level managers who go running, cycling, or swimming before between or after working hours.”

These events are undoubtedly also massive image-building exercises given the huge amounts of corporate sponsorship and media attention that flows in. They signal that the company is socially responsible and involved in community development and that the leadership is fit and ready to handle challenges. Furthermore, these events act as teams-building exercises, where the sense of group cohesion, working towards common goals, and healthy competition develops rapidly.

What is even more intriguing is the effect physical fitness has on firm performance. In an article titled ‘Does CEO fitness matter?’, Peter Limbach and Florian Sonnenberg from the University of Cologne, found “a positive relation between CEO fitness and firm value.” Their study suggests that physical fitness of CEOs has a positive impact on the value of the company, advocating that a high fitness level has a beneficial effect on job performance, stress coping, and cognitive functions. They found that CEO fitness was associated with higher firm profitability and higher M&A announcement returns.

Companies are now recognising these benefits and have started taking an active interest in supporting their employees’ fitness goals. Many firms are encouraging employees to do more sports during lunchtime and in their free time. They offer special discounts for fitness studios and have showers in offices that allows employees to do sports before they come to work and during their lunch break. Employees are being encouraged to participate as corporate teams in running competitions. As a by-product, this is making office and work much more fun too.