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Dear Reader,
It’s a simple calculation: The more productive an employee, the more profitable for the company. That’s how the company AFS sees it, as our lead story describes.
Mental and physical productivity cannot be separated. So the principle applies to desk-bound and physical work. Both activities put a strain on certain muscles and thus “train” them, while others remain underused. This results in a muscular dysbalance, which will eventually lead to pain in the musculoskeletal system. Back and neck pain are often the first to occur, later other joints, such as knees and hips follow.
Preventive and therapeutic strength training are the easiest way to prevent this from happening. Because only a pain free employee is fully productive. Encouraging staff to train regularly therefore does indeed pay dividends to both, the employee and the employer.
So whether you are an employer or an employee, feel free to approach the manager at your facility to ask about the corporate deals on offer for you and your company.
Werner Kieser
Refuelling for the job
At Dresden International Airport, nine fuel attendants are responsible for aircraft refuelling. To make sure they are up to the job, they “refuel“ at Kieser Training. Their training is sponsored by their employer in what turns out to be a real win-win situation.
Andreas Warmer attaches a 2” thick hose to the wing of an Airbus 300/600 and with arms above his head, he presses the coupling against the opening, locks it and starts to pump kerosene into the tank. It takes about 30 minutes to fill all the tanks for the flight to the Egyptian city of Hurghada. “For this job, you need to concentrate and work quickly and safely. This demands physical fitness as well,“ explains Warmer.
To keep fit, Andreas trains twice and sometimes even three times a week at Kieser Training. His employer – AFS Aviation Fuel Services GmbH, an affiliate of Lufthansa and German BP – pays for his annual subscription. AFS has more than 400 staff working at 11 international airports in Germany and Austria and each year, they refuel some 600,000 aircraft. They work around the clock, with minutes counting. Irrespective of whether the sun is shining, it’s raining or stormy, refuelling must be completed quickly and safely so that the aircraft can leave on time.
Four years ago in a bid to increase the physical fitness and health of its staff and reduce absence rates, the AFS Head Office in Hamburg launched a healthcare programme under the banner “Prevention is better than any cure“. “Staff are our most important resource,“ says Hartmut Gentsch, the Safety Engineer who initiated the prevention programme. “They are crucial if we are to satisfy customer needs in full. It’s not enough to invest just in new technology. We want to help staff remain healthy, satisfied and motivated,“ he stresses.
Hans-Joachim Löscher, Operations Manager at Dresden, values the healthcare programme. Seven of his staff have been on board from the start, including Andreas Warmer. “With an ageing population, staff are getting older,“ explains Löscher. “For me, it’s important that they remain healthy and can do their job until they retire. One of his staff has since retired – with Kieser Training. Löscher smiles as he recalls: “As a retirement present, he asked for an extension of his training contract. For my staff, training has long been an integral part of their lives.“ And what about him? “They chide me if I miss training too often,“ he admits with a grin. The Operations Manager is proud of the statistics showing that his team has the highest participation rate within AFS. However, that’s not all; it also has the lowest absence rate. He is amazed that other medium- sized companies still neglect the problem: “Whenever an employee is off sick, it costs the company money. It is much better to invest in the health of staff – it pays dividends for both sides.“
350 – a powerful number
Does this sound familiar? It’s up in the morning, into the car and off to work. Then it’s the lift to the office where the office door opens automatically – but of course, I hear you say. After that, it’s 4 hours of concentrated sitting at your desk but eventually it’s time for a break: So, it’s back to the lift and down to the canteen – time to sit quietly and eat. But before you know it, the office chair summons. At the end of the day, you leave work and in almost no time at all you’re sat on the sofa ready for a long session in front of the TV.
From morning to night, every aspect of daily life is fully automated. Thanks to technological achievements, the most we need to do is to use the finger muscles to operate a mouse or any number of remote controls. Prof. Dr. Wildor Hollmann, a well-known specialist in sports medicine, has worked out that we need 350 calories less than we did 50 years ago thanks to technology. That in turn has had a detrimental effect on our figure. However, excess body fat combined with a lack of physical exercise not only affects the way we look. Much more serious is the effect on our health: With every additional kilo, we increase the risk of heart, circulatory or metabolic disorders such as high blood pressure or diabetes – a much weightier consequence.
What’s to be done? First of all, give up the escalator or lift! But that’s not all. As a Kieser Training customer you already know the answer: what modern humans lack is not just exercise but rather our muscles primarily lack resistance. What really helps is muscle training – trained muscles are not only good fat burners round the clock, but also help carry you through life much more lightly.
