Playing sport before work, playing sport after the work, even during working hours. Combining work with sport is a phenomenon that is constantly gaining in popularity. It has a proven positive impact on your concentration, your productivity, your enthusiasm, and on your condition to boot. We talked about all this with Dennis Scheyltjens from Moving Rocks, in residence at Frame21 in Herentals.
“Proof that general welfare on the shop floor increases productivity is no longer needed,” explains Dennis Scheyltjens from Moving Rocks. “This productivity is evident in different ways: from mental agility and less time off sick, right through to stress management. Sport is also a platform on which employees can connect with each other, it enhances the group feeling and stimulates creativity.”
Moving Rocks works on bringing to life and implementing a culture of movement and progress at companies. We use the motto “Entrepreneurial work is elite sport.” In so doing they endeavour to integrate the methodology of the sporting world into companies to make them stronger both physically and from a business perspective, individually and as a team. “Moving Rocks wants to motivate people to move and have this part of their daily rhythm, while also creating a consensus to have movement become part of the corporate culture.”
Dennis also observes an increasingly common trend with employers encouraging sport more than ever. “Look at sports vouchers that are now part of the employee’s pay. But there is still a contentious area between work time and movement time. And that is exactly where the challenge lies. It’s down to convincing employers that movement can be a part of working time. Movement time does not by definition have to be lost time, it can indeed contribute to good work productivity.”
How is Dennis Scheyltjens able to encourage a culture of movement at companies? That varies enormously, he explains. “It can be top-down or bottom-up. On the one hand the management must be convinced of the concept, and they must also show a good example by truly subscribing to the idea. On the other hand employees must also be prepared to be enthused. Such internal communication at the company is an important part of the project.”
This particularly concerns raising awareness. “They can be stimulated using workshops, internal communication, to organising actual sporting and movement projects such as teambuilding. It is also important to link these activities to general fun, also being a way to keep employees busy with their sporting endeavours.”
