Running + Business = Healthy body and healthy sheets

Every month of June, the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry celebrates small, medium and big businesses and their entrepreneurial spirit that drive Cebu’s growth through the month-long jubilee known as the Cebu Business Month.

This year, the CBM Power Team included a road race in their official list of activities – the 1st Cebu Run for the Rivers, which drew around a thousand runners last Sunday at the SM City Cebu Northwing grounds.

The road race was aimed at raising awareness for the restoration of the river systems and creeks in Metro Cebu. It was also held to support the government’s “Sagip Ilog” program that will focus on improving the water quality of priority river systems in Cebu. These are the Bulacao, Buhisan, Guadalupe, Mahiga and Lahug rivers.

It was an opportunity for members of the CCCI and their employees to relieve stress and jumpstart an active lifestyle through running.

This is a great start. But my wish is that more companies realize that it makes good business sense to support their employees’ love for (whether new-found or a long ongoing affair with) the great sport of running.

My law school classmate, lawyer Dennis Quiokeles, who owns Pacific Land Ventures and Property Development Inc. (Pacific Land) which built and developed Pueblo El Grande Mactan Plains, has made it part of company policy to support employees who run.

“Participation in sanctioned running events is free for our employees here as a matter of company policy. We target joining one organized run per month. We’ve participated in Kapamilya Run, Cebu Marathon, University Run, Silk Aur Run, SM2SM, and a few other runs. In a little over a year since we implemented this policy, from nil, now more than 25 has picked up running and 3 had already joined a half marathon.”

Dennis and his company is on to something great here. By encouraging his employees to take up running, he hits two birds with one stone – develop a culture of discipline and deep commitment among the ranks, and make his employees happy which eventually translates to better productivity and profit.

In the article “Why runners usually make great employees” Olivier Blanchard of The Brandbuilder Blog explains:

“The type of determination, discipline and emotional focus that comes with training day in, day out for extremely challenging endurance events (often by yourself) tends to bleed over into people’s 9-5’s. You learn a lot about yourself, training for that type of event.

You learn a lot about how to break thresholds and get past your own little ego, training for events like these. When you’re tired and sore and hungry but you still have four miles to go, guess what? You still have four miles to go. How you get through these last four miles is entirely up to you.

Once you’ve broken past your lack of will and learned to keep going, you are transformed. That someone else, the marathoner, the long distance cyclist, the triathlete, the Ironman, he or she walks into your place of work with you every morning.

We all work with two types of people: Partisans of the least amount of effort, and dedicated professionals. The latter aren’t all marathoners or triathletes, but I have yet to meet an Ironman or marathoner who didn’t take his or her intensity and dedication to their job.”

Finally, while Dennis’ additional company expense subsidizing his employees’ expensive race registration fees is not an expense that immediately translates to more sales, it will, in the end, contribute to a healthy bottomline. When an employer invests in his employees’ happiness, he makes more money in the end.

Best-selling author and clinical psychologist, Dr. Noelle Nelson, in the book “Make More Money by Making Your Employees Happy” posits that “when employees feel that the company takes their interest to heart, then the employees will take company interests to heart x x x. Companies that effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity & assets more than triple that experienced by firms that don’t.”