It has the latest fitness equipment, from a Cybex training circuit to stationary Expresso Cycles with video screens that let you bike virtually through a bucolic countryside. It holds classes in yoga, Pilates, boot camp and the hottest exercise trend, Zumba. And it offers personal training, massage therapy and a variety of health screenings. Yet it's not a glitzy mirror-wall health club aimed at fitness-minded singles.
In fact, its business has nothing to do with fitness.
It's Cisco, worldwide provider of networking systems for business. And Cisco, with its state-of-the-art workout center, is hardly alone among its contemporaries in Research Triangle Park, where buff bodies seem about as important as strong bottom lines.
"People know that staying healthy is important in life," says Kristen Vosburgh, vice president of compensation and benefits with RTI International. "They know that if they can work it into their workday it's a plus."
And increasingly, there's a growing awareness among employers that a company's health is only as strong as its employees'. Healthy employees miss less work, are more productive and are less of a drain on the company health insurance plan.
It's an awareness that's particularly strong in RTP, where about all of the 170-plus companies, from 3,500-worker-strong Cisco, to those with barely enough to field a football team, seem to offer employees fitness perks.
"There's been a movement in [human resources] circles over the past decade about the health and well being of employees," says Ben Rosen, professor of organizational behavior in UNC's Kenan Flagler School of Business. Of fitness amenities that exceed those offered by most health clubs, he adds, "It's just a great perk for employees."
And when one company in an industry sweetens the perk pot with such benefits, others, he says, are obliged to follow. That's why the high-tech-oriented RTP is a haven for the health conscious.
About 2,000 of the RTI International's 2,800 employees work in RTP, and Vosburgh estimates that upward of half take advantage of either the company's onsite workout facility or its various other fitness options, from flag football to pickup soccer games to a new nine-hole disc golf course circling RTI's campus.
Getting into a routine
Debra Ackerman, a financial analyst for the research institute, didn't have aspirations to complete an Ironman. She just wanted to lose some weight and have enough energy to romp with her three grandchildren. When RTI's onsite fitness facility opened three years ago, she enrolled in a Muscle Max class, a mix of strength training and cardio. Ackerman wasn't a stranger to working out, but she wasn't consistent about her self-imposed workouts at home after work.
"It's hard to stay motivated when you're alone," she says.
But not when you have a scheduled workout just a few minutes away three days a week. Ackerman quickly fell into a lunchtime routine of reporting to the RTI gym: Three years later she's 30 pounds lighter, "I look better, I feel stronger and I enjoy physical activities with the grand kids."
She has also discovered the antidote to those convenience store checkout counter energy potions: "It kind of wakes you up so you can start the day again. I'm a lot more productive in the early afternoon."
Testimonials like Ackerman's may be why most companies don't obsess over whether they're getting a return on their fitness dollar investment.
"Sometimes the motivation isn't to save money," says Rosen, "but to increase employee well being and improve retention of employees."
In his 2008 book "Proof Positive: An Analysis of the Cost-Effectiveness of Wellness," Larry Chapman looked at 42 workplace health promotion and wellness programs involving more than 370,000 workers and discovered that, on average, the programs:
Reduced sick leave by 27.8 percent.
Reduced health costs by 28.7 percent.
Reduced disability costs by 33.5 percent.
Reduced workers comp costs by 33.5 percent.
For every dollar invested saved $5.50 in related costs.
Green space is a bonus
Ackerman, for instance, has been at RTI for 12 years. Likewise, co-worker Vanessa Thornburg, who might be on RTI's disabled list were it not for a yoga class offered by the company.
She was suffering from carpal tunnel symptoms two years ago, and an orthopedist suggested surgery. A friend suggested yoga instead. Thornburg is quick to note that some types of yoga can exacerbate carpal tunnel, but the class she took included mudra, a practice concentrating on hand and finger exercises. Within a month, she noticed "a big difference." When she misses a class or two, her carpal tunnel flares.
Fitness programs can also help break down corporate boundaries.
By day, Ed Hutchins is a technical materials engineer with Cree, the Durham tech company. Come 5 p.m. , he's commissioner of RTP's intramural coed softball league, which fields 40 teams from companies in the park. On the playing field, says Hutchins, there are no organizational charts, no caste system.
"We have everyone from finance, to line operators to engineers on our teams," Hutchins says. "You walk down the hall and see someone you play softball with, you're more likely to say, 'Hey, how you doing?' "
Fitness programs aren't just for the park's mega-tenants, the Ciscos, the IBMs and the RTIs. The park offers a variety of amenities to tenants large and small, including four softball fields, a dozen volleyball courts, 15 miles of paved pedestrian trails and a two-mile single track mountain bike trail system.
"Definitely one of the strong, enduring features of the park is that we have all this green space," says James Lim, program director with the Research Triangle Foundation, which administers the 50-year-old, 7,000-acre development where about 42,000 are employed full time.
And smaller companies get in on the action individually by bringing in instructors to teach onsite classes. The 15-employee Research Triangle Foundation, for instance, brings in instructors twice a week to teach Pilates and cross training.
As Larry Chapman's "Proof Positive" analysis shows, altruism isn't the only motive RTP companies have for providing lavish fitness centers, sponsoring softball teams and playing lose with the lunch "hour" so workers can get in a workout. Still, employees recognize a good deal when they see one.
"This is very much a gift that RTI gives us," Thornburg says. "It works both ways, but I feel very blessed with this facility."
