How FitRankings is taking office fitness beyond standing desks

Much has been written about the negative effects of sitting in front of a computer all day. It causes obesity! Bad posture! Strained eyesight! Overall, the consensus from health officials seems to be “get thee to a standing desk.”

 

But the cubicle isn't necessarily the only facet of life where work can affect your health. Between getting to the office at 9 a.m. and having dinner on the table at 7, plenty of workers aren't able to fit exercise into their schedules. That's where FitRankings, one of Austin's newest startups, comes in. Co-founders Patrick Hitchins and Troung-An Thai created their company with the hopes of getting employees to sweat a little more over the treadmill and a little less over reports.

 

When Hitchins and Thai looked into the workplace cost of inactivity, the results were more eye-opening than an early morning run. Not only were people not working out, but offices weren't making fitness a priority. “Looking at the entire corporate wellness landscape, we saw it was largely a failure,” Hitchens said. “With all the fitness memberships out there, the participation rate is about 5 percent for employees. And those are the employees who are already healthy, not the individuals who are increasing healthcare costs.”

 

FitRankings' question was clear: what was keeping the other 95 percent away from the gym?

 

Time, of course, was the main culprit. Employees were constantly running out of time, and it wasn't the kind of running that kept them in shape. Hitchins and Thai knew they had to access corporate structures in order to make meaningful changes. “We developed a solution with the busy employee and the busy HR admin in charge of employee wellness in mind,” Hitchins explained. “We wanted employees to be able to engage in fitness and to give the HR manager software to manage this fitness.”

 

Hitchens said they got the inspiration from hearing about a similar fitness-oriented company that saved businesses $300,000 a year in healthcare costs.

 

As with so many aspects of the business world, FitRankings gets people moving with a healthy dose of competition. Employees of participating companies can log workouts and earn points for activities, which move their names up in the website ranks. Both individual employees and the companies themselves are ranked, so customers can literally see how they stack up to the competition.

 

A number of Austin's bigger businesses are already shaping up with FitRankings, including HomeAway, Rackspace, and SpareFoot.

 

In the end, however, FitRankings is really about helping businesses help employees. “We operate from the philosophy that work is a sport,” Hitchins said. “Whether you're an intern or the CEO, you need to perform if you want a job in today's market, and the way you're going to perform your best is if you're fit."