Case study: Pepsico UK & Ireland

Fit For Life Scheme

Pepsico Fit for Life SchemePepsiCo understands that to continually embrace life balance at work, it needs to offer more than just policies and benefits to its employees. It has developed a programme called Fit For Life, which is supported by professional consultants who specialise in health and wellness.

The initiative is designed to help individuals to identify areas within their current lifestyles which are causing imbalance and then support them to drive sustainable change by using a personal external phone coach for three months following the workshop.

As life-balance is such a personal area, the programme deliberately covers a broad range of topics, and allows individuals to build a personal plan of the areas most relevant to them. The element of personal choice is critical to the overall approach, as it ensures that individuals are committed to a self-managed programme of change while taking personal responsibility to make a difference.

The programme is set out in three stages:

  • Stage One: Prework. An MOT me. Builds self-awareness of current life balance and wellness issues
  • Stage Two: Fit for Life workshop. An innovative and high energy intervention, to build further levels of self-awareness. Learn tips and techniques. Start to think about personal change plan

Stages One and Two cover a broad range of subject areas (stress, sleep patterns, nutrition, exercise patterns, psychological barriers to achieving better balance), to help give employees insight into which issues are relevant for them.

  • Stage Three: Personal Coach. Employees can book followup calls with their personal coach to review their personal plan and make progress. This is an opportunity to go deeper into the chosen subjects, to drive sustainable change

The programme has been a huge success; over 30% of PepsiCo's employees have attended the programme so far, and another 20% are signed up to the next programme.

PepsiCo will continue to roll out the programme to ensure it touches a critical mass of employees, but it also wants to ensure it leverages the full potential of this initiative to drive sustainable cultural change.

The focus on life-balance has continued to evolve through a number of other projects, from smaller initiatives such as offering healthier food choices in the workplace – there is a Fit for Life choice each day in the restaurant – to displaying visible health and fitness information around the offices reinforcing the Fit For Life messages.

This programme was highly commended at the 2008 and 2006 Community Partnership Awards: Workplace Community Category

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More Information

FDF has published a booklet called Workplace Wellbeing: The Food Industry in Action - pdf | 1.2Mb, which features many of the schemes found in this section.


Last reviewed: 25 Mar 2009