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Corporations are starting to reach the conclusion that desk-bound jobs constitute occupational hazards. Therefore, they are spending large sums of money on facilities to keep their employees physically and mentally healthy and productive. In ten years, such programs will be so commonplace that people will not accept a job in companies without one.

Informed sources argue that this trend is not just a temporary one, and business expert James Shepherd of the Business Health Advisory Commission emphasizes that “fitness programs are the wave of the future and in ten years there will be very few large companies that won’t have become involved.” Some major corporations have already set up elaborate fitness operations, costing millions of dollars to build and to keep up, as a means of both recruiting employees and refurbishing their image.

However, this drive for business fitness involves much more than mere recruitment. Industry in this country suffers annual losses estimated at $25 billion a year as a result of employees dying before their time and loses billions more through diminished productivity because of ill health and disability. Indeed, it has been officially estimated that backaches alone cost industry no less than $1 billion annually in production and the like and $225 million more in employees’ compensation. Such statistics have shaken large corporations into a realization that drastic measures need to be taken to get desk-bound employees out of their seats.

Even though there is as yet no hard evidence to show the benefits of in-house fitness programs, corporate physical fitness is becoming something of an industry in its own right. According to one member of the President’s Council, more than 500 companies across the country have fitness programs managed by full-time directors. Even more noteworthy is national membership in the American Association of Fitness Directors in Business and Industry. When the organization was formed in 1974, there were 25 members. Today their number exceeds 2,000.

Corporate fitness is no longer the joke it once was. Physical fitness is being practiced by all sizes and shapes of corporate executives with the same kind of seriousness and determination they used to show only in the board room. At Chase Manhattan Bank, there is a five-month wait to join the company’s cardiovascular fitness program in spite of the fact that participants who fail to attend regularly lose their program membership.

What, though, are the benefits that may realistically be expected from all this physical effort? Several studies that have been carried out so far suggest that they are of considerable value. One of the first experiments provided a regular exercise program for almost 300 men aged 35 to 55. After a year those taking part were given thorough medical examinations and asked to answer a number of questions. Over 90 percent of the regular participants reported that they felt better, and over half said that they had a more positive attitude toward work and had improved their performance on the job.

There is no doubt that at the present time American companies that have instituted fitness programs are convinced of their benefits in terms of productivity, but all the same, they have not been scientifically confirmed. The Business Health Advisory Commission has invited 17 firms with fitness programs to cooperate in the development of standardized tests to judge whether corporate programs relating to physical fitness, giving up smoking, losing weight, and reducing hypertension are worthwhile.

All the same, even if its value cannot be proved scientifically, the fitness movement is not likely to run out of steam in the foreseeable future. Some experts are of the opinion that physical fitness could well become a required condition of employment. In the future, it is probable that employees whose ambition it is to move up the corporate ladder may have to show their superiors that they are not only mentally but also physically fit.

A further future development may involve companies checking out the physical health of prospective employees before hiring them. Legal problems could result if this were interpreted as discriminatory, but with companies paying for so much of their employees’ healthcare costs, many of them consider that they have a right to know about prospective employees’ physical limitations.

It will not be surprising to most people to hear that employers have been having more of a say in the lives of their workers. In the field of healthcare, for example, what started out some years ago as rudimentary plans have since developed into full medical coverage for the worker and his whole family. Dental and optometric plans are now being included. Furthermore, along with physical fitness comes the other new corporate trend: Employee assistance programs for person fighting personal problems such as alcoholism, unhappy marriages, or overeating. Under these arrangements, employees are offered professional counseling services at company expense. Millions of workers in the private and public sectors are now eligible for these benefits.