Exercising on company paid time

seeleyhr

If we were to pay people for part of their lunch and they leave the building and are involved in an accident/injury what would be the liability of the company? One item the company is considering is allowing people to exercise on their lunch time and paying them for part of it as an incentive to increase their physical activity. My concern is that we may be opening ourselves up for worker's comp claims if any of them should injury themselves while exercising on company time.

Thoughts from other HR people please.

TN HR

Speaking only about TN case law, the courts have generally found injuries arising from a situation such as yours would be non-compensable. The focus here is on the ee being off-premise.

A slight change however, and it's a whole different ball game. Again, in TN, if the injury occurs on the property, then it's compensable. The rationale here is that if the employee is on your property, even though on a break period (paid or unpaid), then he/she remains avaible to you and under is under your control.

I wouldn't do it. If you want to promote a wellness program, why not subsidize gym memberships? Another neat idea I read about recently is to award points for doing things like joining a gym, getting your cholesterol checked, losing weight, etc. You can give cash/prizes based on points. You get the picture.

Gene

mwild31

In WA, I can't think of how an injury sustained at the gym would qualify as a worker comp. claim - even though a portion of the ee's time there was compensable. It's a voluntary program, right? The company paying the portion of the time is only doing so as an incentive and not making time at the gym mandatory, right? I would fight it if a claim came in.

I like the creativity, but I would probably scratch the idea all together and instead have the company pay a portion of the either the health club membership fee or the monthly dues - you would probably save money that way anyway.

Not knowing the details, let's just say the lunch is 30 minutes long and you will pay 15 minutes of it ("paying them for part of it"). In this scenario, Employee X is full-time and makes $15 an hour. Within the hour there are 60 minutes, so EE X making $15 an hour makes 0.25 cents a minute. If you pay the person for 15 minutes of their 30 minute lunch break to work out, you have spent $3.75 that day for that person. Not too bad. However, usually there are 20-21 work days in a month, so if they worked out every business day, you will have spent $75 (excluding taxes, benefits & how paying for this extra 15 minutes might take the person into OT if they were already working 40 hours a week). We just sent out a flyer in which we checked gym prices & membership fees & Bally's Total Fitness came in near the highest for monthly dues at $48....

MaryHR

We get paid for working out during work hours. We do have our own gym though, so it is on our premises. We are asked to do it during normal working hours though. And we can never work out alone.

Don D

We have the same deal here. Although people sign a waiver form before being allowed to use the gym, it will be interesting to see what happens the first time we have an injury in the gym.

MaryHR

The waiver is a good idea. Do you think it would hold up? We just added our gym a few months ago and we have already had one w/c issue with a weight being dropped on a toe.

TN HR

Given the scenario you describe with the on-site gym, a waiver, in the State of Tennessee, would not mean squat. Perhaps, the only mitigating factor here could be if the employee came-in on a scheduled day off to use the gym.

pork1

SEELEYHR: Bottomline is you should broach this matter with your retained attorney. Physical exercise supported and pushed in one form or another is done for the benefit of the COMPANY 1st AND the employee 2nd. We do this out of the (GOOD)idea that physically fit employees will work more safely and a healtier employee will reduce the need for medical plan support. Contolling one's meal break time by the company clearily puts the employee "at work", which in some courts out West would put the employee into the W/C arena and would most likely allow the claimant attorney to bury the company at the "stop sign", where the employee returning from a "company supported exercise program" is killed or worse yet, killed someone else's child!!!

Our attorney has moved us away from company sponsored "softball" programs out of concerns for the runaway juries in our state and the claimant lawyers, who chase after every dust pile, not to go to court, but to seek a SETTLEMENT! RAINMAKERS produce alot of legal activity with the least amount of work and the most $ollars bu reaching settlement.

We just went with a third W/C carrier in one year's time, because the carrier and their retained attorney began to talk settlement with the injuried employee before there was a need to talk settlement. Lawyers can build up alot of time chaulked up to a case but do little physical work and that was on both sides. The injured party's attorney personally knows the carrier attorney in our state and probably went to school to get their degree. The set up is willful on both attorney's parts.

I was disappointed in our attorney's steering us away form sponsorship of sporting and exercise events. But I have to admit he was right about the nature of "TORT" today in our state.

Don't do it is my recommendation! Be careful of awards for the "loss of weight" and the likes, next thing you know the company will be accused of discrimination against the obese employee not able to loose weight.

PORK

seeleyhr

Unfortunately we do not have an onsite gym. Some locations are city and some are rural. The exercising would be off company premises. In normal situations, when an employee leaves the premises for lunch/personal reasons they are to swipe off the clock. Employees are automatically deducted 1/2 hour for lunch now. Extending the lunch time to 45 minutes and paying them for 15 minutes of their lunch is what they are thinking of doing - main concern is hourly employees.

J9JC

Not trying to be negative here but it is going to sound like it...but if they have to leave the office and drive to and from the gym, and then only have 15 minutes of paid time, that really does not sound too attractive for several reasons. I realize they can use more of their time to work out but they also have to eat in this time. Seems to me they would be rushing to fit in working out and eating, so they would be driving faster to get back and forth, eating too fast or just eating on work time when they get back. Even if they plan on using 30 mins to work out, the driving time and proper warm up to not be hurt are likely going to take up much of thier time. Sorry, I just don't see this being so well received by the employees, let alone the potential risk to the company. I do like the suggestion to subsidize part of gym memberships, then they can go after work and such and use as much time as they want, and truly get a break on their 30 minute lunch break. Good luck in whatever you do.

seeleyhr

We already subsidize gym memberships; however, most offices are not close enough to a gym to partipate at lunch time. We were tninking of exercise they can do at their location such as walking. Most of our locations are in a rural location where this would be feasible; however, they are still leaving the premises.