How Indian firms keep their employees healthy and motivated with sports leagues
Lounge speaks with a cross-section of Indian firms to find out about the benefits of keeping employees healthy through in-house sports leagues
India Inc. has come up with multiple initiatives to encourage employees to take up an active lifestyle and focus on their health and fitness. Many organisations also incentivise signing up for (and sticking with) specific health programmes. There are a host of activities, sports and initiatives such as running, yoga, gym membership, robust health insurance schemes, regular medical check-ups, mental health workshops and much more that employees can choose from.
“Among the activities that can be called successful are sporting activities where collective fun-filled activities are done,” says Rajesh Uppal, member of the executive board for HR, IT, safety and digital enterprise, Maruti Suzuki India Limited. The least successful initiative, notes Uppal, is, ironically, the voluntary annual medical check-up programme, where the adoption rate is low. Gym memberships and office workout initiatives are seeing a low uptake these days, add HR experts.
Keeping employee interest in mind, most organisations nowadays have their own sports leagues, often based on the successful Indian Premier League (IPL) format, and tournaments that run all year round.
Sports brand Puma India has been running its own sports league, called the Puma SportsLife League (PSL), since 2015. The league has multiple teams and Puma employees hold annual auctions, have a lineup of play-offs and design special jerseys for their teams.