- Position‹3 of 3
- The fitness and wellness markets within the healthcare industry will make huge profits
- Argument
Healthy living initiatives will be implemented in workplaces
Many Americans have grown aware of their lack of healthy living. In an effort to improve employee retention and increase worker productivity, many workplaces have begun to make wellness changes to their workspaces. They will become huge clients for the services offered by these wellness markets.
The argument
During the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all businesses, save essential businesses, mandated that their employees work from home — and the change in where people worked produced a change in how much they moved. Research had previously shown that almost 25% to 35% of all Americans have sedentary lifestyles. During quarantine, these percentages drastically increased, as the commute, the walk between meetings and the incidental movement of an office day disappeared at once. What made this consequential was not the increase alone but its visibility: many people grew increasingly aware of the inactive lifestyle they led. That awareness prompted employers to act. The increase in sedentary lifestyles prompted companies to plan small but impactful changes to reinforce health and wellness for their workers. A common initiative is to provide free and healthy snacks to workers: 32% of all companies already do this, but there is projected to be a sharp increase after the pandemic. Also, many companies are planning on partnering with gyms or personal trainers to provide virtual or in-person exercise opportunities for their workers. Mental health has become an equally important initiative, with companies providing safe spaces and personal counselors to all of their employees. Each of those initiatives is a purchase. Snacks, gym partnerships, trainers and counselling are all bought from the fitness, nutrition and wellness sectors, and buying them at the scale of a workforce rather than an individual converts what had been discretionary consumer spending into a recurring corporate cost line. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has reoriented people's priorities towards personal health and wellbeing, and many companies are being responsible towards their employees' needs and finding different ways to ensure this. Because employers are now the ones paying, the fitness and wellness markets within the healthcare industry stand to make large profits from the shift.
Premises
Counter-arguments
COVID-19 won't lead to a massive spike in wellness markets, particularly in workplaces because most offices are going to be online or remote. While employee health is a concern for companies, most will not institute wellness programs when they are financially hard hit and are just trying to stay afloat. They might provide more flexible hours or higher compensation but massive, systemic wellness initiatives are a very far fetched idea given their lack of practicality and the state of the economy.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Noticing a sedentary lifestyle is not spending on one. The premise records a change in what people observed about themselves and treats it as a change in what employers will buy. [Rejecting P2] The initiatives listed are small and cheap — snacks, a gym partnership, a counselling line — and their expansion is projected rather than observed. Employers under financial strain more often reach for flexible hours than for new programmes. [Rejecting P3] The step to large profits is missing. Workplace perks are a small share of the fitness and wellness market, and with offices remote or reduced, the on-site provision the argument describes has much less to attach to.