Why I have a treadmill in my office

Above is a picture of the desk treadmill I purchased for my office.

No doubt there are now 2 questions going through your head:

1 Why is there a treadmill in my office?

2 Why is this on linkedIn?

The first question is easily answered: I spend anywhere from 9 to 11 hours a day in my office and I have a 1 hour (one way) commute to work. If I want to get my 10.000 steps a day in (and we all should!) I had to be able to do it in the office and outside of my personal space I wear a face mask (again we all should!) and they are not very pleasant to walk in.

I have also realised that I spend an inordinate amount of time talking/listening on the phone or via video conferencing, and I can definitely walk and talk at the same time.

The second question: leadership also implies being a role model. I had gained weight during the pandemic and looking around I am not the only one, and the lock downs and other restrictions have also made exercising and activity in general much harder.

I was starting to get health issues, nothing major but my blood pressure was up, my lab teste were not as good etc. All related to the above, not enough exercise and not the right food choices.

By publicly showing that I am doing something there is less of a hurdle for my colleagues to take similar action. Some want to go to the gym over their lunch break, some cycle to work and others may feel compelled to walk like I do.

By showing how I find a way to include more exercise in my hectic schedule, I am inspiring them to do the same and I can already see it is working. I have had several co corkers join me in my office asking how and what they could do and we came up with some great strategies that fit their work. With many of them working from home there are so many options. I have noticed this really improved the morale at Europlasma and in the long run it will improve the health and wellbeing of all employees here and that in turn will have great benefits to the whole company as happy and healthy employees are productive employees!