PhD, Associate Professor V.A. Rodionov¹
PhD M.A. Rodionova^1
1Surgut State University, Surgut

Keywords: corporate sports, health, healthy workplace model, corporate culture, healthy lifestyle.

Background. Governmental policies of the Russian Federation give a special priority to the physical education and sports and health services to active population. Thus the National Demography Project for the period up to 2024 is geared to help increase up to 55% the population committed for healthy lifestyle and active in physical education and sports, with the active life expectancy forecast to grow to 67 years on average as a result [2]. These ambitious goals are considered a basis for the future national progress with the healthy human capital viewed as a growth driver for the national economy on the whole and every industrial and service sector in particular. Many analysts mention in this context that contributions of the modern corporate sports to the health, active longevity and labor efficiency improvement and corporate culture formation initiatives are still underexplored by the research community [1].

Objective of the study was to analyze the corporate sports resource and its potential contributions to the health standards and physical activity of active population.

Results and discussion. The Russian population covered by regular physical education and sports services was reported to grow from 13% to 39.8% of the total in the period of 2006 to 2018, with the economically active 19-29 year-old group reported at 63.6%; 30-54 year old women plus 30-59 year old men at 25%; and 55-79 year-olds at 5.8% of the sporting population, that means that the actively sporting group tends to fast contract after 30 years of age.

As mentioned by Federal Minister of Sports P.A. Kolobkov at the Physical Education and Sports Development Council session in Nizhny Novgorod on October 10, 2019, people under 40 years of age appear to be the core age group to help expand the actively sporting population to 55% of the total. He believes that this goal may be attained by "... special sporting services to the economically active population at work, with multiple synergized benefits for the labor efficiency, labor safety and health standards". These physical education and sports services may take many forms in addition to the traditional industrial physical education / gymnastics, including modern corporate sports sensitive to the “... the corporate codes of conduct, relationships and values of business sporting culture with its competitive spirit and special trainings to unite people, form teamwork skills, form friendly climate, loyalty to the management and company, strengthen the leadership and contribute to the positive image of the company on the whole” [3].

As demonstrated by a few foreign studies, corporate culture is critical for success of the personnel health improvement initiatives [4, 5], with the modern corporate sports models and mechanisms being of influence on the people’s thinking traditions and lifestyles. Sports cause impacts on every social domain, lifestyle, fashion, communication aspect and even business culture. Enormous moral potential of modern sports contributes to transformations in physical health standards, spiritual and ethical norms and human values, with the individual values and priorities forming a basis for motivations and practical actions. The commonly accepted social norms act as external regulators of behavioral models, whilst values act as the internal ones. An individual behavior is controlled and dictated by the accepted and professed values ​​and norms. The employer’s initiatives geared to promote, reproduce and disseminate the social and corporate physical education and sports values may effectively shape up the personnel attitudes, communication styles and world outlooks under the influences of the health services and health culture.

The WHO came up in 2010 with a healthy workplace model sensitive to the workers’ needs [6]. For the last few decades, the healthy workplace concept has been rolled over to cover every factor of influence on the working population’s health including healthy lifestyles and the psychosocial and physical environments that can have a positive or negative impact on the employees’ health standards [4]. The healthy workplace building initiatives are generally well grounded in the legal and economic aspects and not necessarily complicated and costly. These initiatives require good public awareness, commitment and active contributions from both employers and employees, with the actual benefits for the corporate health standards, satisfaction with the job, morale, labor efficiency and corporate business climate on the whole being worth the efforts. It should be mentioned that these benefits never come soon and may take a few years to be seen, as well as the negative costs of mismanagement or inaction in this domain.

Positive experiences of the corporate health improvement initiatives have been reported by a few national research communities [6]. Large-scale businesses can often afford ambitious physical education and sports projects with their own training gyms, water pools and ice hockey fields for physical trainings and health projects. The companies with more limited resources have often come up with initiatives to reduce smoking, offer corporate physical education and sport services and healthy diets to the employees etc. The cost-efficient corporate health projects may include the employees’ health surveys with special screenings of the high-risk groups – e.g. with the cholesterol and blood sugar tests, vaccination programs and group health risks rating studies. Modern health improvement programs of this type may be highly sensitive to the individual health issues and risks, and are increasingly promoted by the national health agencies in many countries. Some countries have been successful in effectively combining such programs with the healthy workplace initiatives and environmental protection projects with a special attention to every social and corporate factor of influence on the health standards and lifestyles.

In the 1960-80ies, the national research elite in medicine, labor physiology and physical education and sports theory had developed and successfully implemented an industrial physical education concept with its health improvement components applicable at work and in leisure time. It should be mentioned that the modern corporate sports, in contrast to the traditional industrial physical education, imply the trainings being assisted by the corporate sports infrastructure and a systemic physical education and sports service (including scheduled group trainings, sports competitions and festivals with inter-corporate, intergroup or sport-specific competitive events) geared to form an individual sporting culture. The team competitions are known to contribute to the teamwork skills, productive communication and interpersonal relations, strengthen discipline and cooperation in every activity. The corporate sports provide a powerful toolkit to the corporate management in their efforts to both improve the health standards and physical activity of employees and form a productive and creative team having common values and priorities and focused on joint goals, with the labor and sports facilitated by a favorable business climate in the company.

Conclusion. Success of a corporate business is known to largely depend on the human resource, labor efficiency and commitment to invest the individual physical, creative and professional resource for the joint benefit, with a business climate at workplace being particularly important. Virtually every company nowadays may find resource to improve the workplaces with a special priority to the personnel health protection and improvement aspects. In some cases, such initiatives may be complex enough and require due synergy of the employee and employer for success, although the potential benefits of such efforts are still high for the both parties and society on the whole. corporate sports as a corporate culture formation component supported by the traditional industrial physical education service are geared to unite the human resource, contribute to the team spirit and teamwork skills, mobilize the individual creative resource of every staff member and thereby improve the physical health standards and healthy lifestyles of the personnel.

References

1. Antipenkova I.V., Kireeva A.V. Optimization of health and fitness activities of office employees in modern conditions of financial organization. Uchenye zapiski universiteta im. P.F. Lesgafta. 2016. no. 11. pp. 19­24.
2. Passport of the national project “Demography”, approved by the decision of the Presidium of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on strategic development and national projects on December 24, 2018.
3. Rodionova M.A., Rodionov V.A., Lubysheva L.I. Corporate sport contributions to industrial corporate cultures\. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 2019. no. 3. pp. 92­94.
4. Jia Y, Fu H, Gao J, Dai J, Zheng P. The roles of health culture and physical environment in workplace health promotion: a two ­year prospective intervention study in China. BMC Public Health. 2018; 18(1):457. Published 2018 Apr 5. doi:10.1186/s12889­018­5361­5
5. World Health Organization. Healthy workplaces: a WHO global model for action. 2014;4:12. http://www.who.int/occupational_health/healthy_workplaces/en.

Corresponding author: rodionovam2007@yandex.ru