Chattanooga, Tenn. might not be the first place one thinks of as health-minded, however the Volkswagen manufacturing plant located there is finding fit employees make better workers. The new VW plant only opened its training center Friday, but new hires are already working on their fitness.
The car company has a good point. Wouldn’t having employees in the kind of shape needed for manual labor be the most productive solution for a manufacturing plant? But instead of requiring workers to initiate the workouts on their own, VW supplies fitness trainers to sculpt the employees into car-making industrial athletes. The two-hour training sessions are held while workers are on the clock.
The goal is to prepare employees to produce excellent work when the plant begins to roll out the vehicles. The fitness sessions are tailored to each specific job involved in creating the VW cars. The idea is “focused on getting each and every one of us, no matter what our job is at the plant, prepared to show up and perform at the highest level of professional excellence,” according to Jason Guess, the VW plant’s manager of safety, health and wellness, via MSNBC. However, many workers are also dropping weight and becoming healthier as a result.
Anthony Stanton, who lost 30 lbs after starting the program, said in the article: “After the first week I started noticing some changes in my body. I could do a flight of stairs a little more easily. I didn’t get winded as easily. When the third week was over my uniform was just being delivered and I noticed my pants I had ordered when we first started working out were looser.”
Slowly but surely, even those employees who felt a bit forced to start the training are enjoying the benefits. Dan Clark, working in logistics, said ”The first week I looked at her (his workout instructor) and told her I hated her. The third week I told her, ‘I don’t hate you anymore.”’
The Volkswagen plant also has a gym onsite that is open to all employees as well as their families.
Photo by jontunn via Flickr.