Healthy Lifestyles Benefit Employers and Employees

An excerpt from the Business Resource Guide & Membership Directory. For more visit www.thegoa.com

Wellness and fitness among employees is taking on added importance as employers of all types realize how disruptive it is to one’s business when an employee is missing for whatever reason. Illness and injury among one’s valuable employees costs a firm time and money and is an emotional drain on not only the affected employee, but those around him or her, as well.

An increasing number of employers are instituting programs that encourage employees to get and remain fit and well for the benefit of not only themselves and their families, but also for the employer.

Hamilton Lakes has been in the forefront of this movement toward employee fitness since the 1970s. As early as 1972 when Ron Lunt and Allan Hamilton were designing their 300-acre Itasca office park, they were thinking of including walking trails and a health club. They had seen them in office parks in other parts of the country, so they wanted to include those amenities to their project here, too, Lunt said.

“Today we continue to strive to create a place where people can live, work and play. We have recently broken ground on 297 apartments at the east end of Hamilton Lakes and are working with Itasca and Zagster to provide a rental bicycle option here and in downtown Itasca at the Springlake Business Park Center. We want to appeal to those Millennials who want to live downtown and commute out here without driving and we want to give everyone something healthy and fun to do while they are here.”