This question got me thinking about the physical health of developers.
As programming is definately not a physical excercise, developers are often prone to develop physical complaints like RSI. Should companies do more to stimulate excercise and healthy lifestyle?
Does your company stimulate a healthy lifestyle, and if so, how?
How far can (or should) companies go without being invasive?
Companies should definitely promote healthy lifestyle - one simple way would be installing a shower in the office so that people can run/cycle to work without being a mess afterwards.
Get rid of the free soda. Make water, juice free, but make the sodas cost a quarter.
Provide discounts at local health club / gym.
Make the stairwell nice. Seriously -- more people would take the stairs if the stairs didn't smell like cigarettes, had new paint, were clean, etc. I've worked in places that had nice stairwells, and bad ones, and definitely noticed the difference in my own behaviour.
My company participates in a Volleyball league and any employee can participate. It's good for the fitness of the employees and it builds the team at the same time.
Mixing sports with socializing seemed to work quite well in our company - several employees have a biweekly soccer games (during the warm season ;-) just for fun, and sometimes a tournament against people from a customer or partner company to keep the motivation up. We also now have a group that goes running once a week directly after work.
The important part seems to me that there is one person who organizes it - does a bit of "advertising", goes around asking people if they want to join, and motiviating people to keep it up (one guy makes a round on the specific day asking each of the runners if they will join this evening - which makes it harder for people to say "no, I'm feeling too lazy tonight" ;-)
I find this question hard to answer as nobody at any workplace I've ever attended gave two hoots about my physical health unless I was so ill I had to take a sick day. So, in theory, if my workplace made it easier for me to fit in daily exercise then I might be fitter, but as neither they nor any other employer has ever done this I might just sit on my behind and ignore the facilities they have lavished on me.
For the record, I would require a smallish gym (maybe just a cross trainer), adequate shower facilities and a changing room to be able to partake in daily work-based exercise. Exercising outside work during the week in winter is just about impossible or too expensive.
I don't know how things are where everyone else is but in England's East Midlands encouraging people to exercise and live healthy are intitiatives that are all about moaning at people and not about helping them out.
Oh and I can't stand football of any type. I like personal exercise.
Good, healthy food is underrated and very important. We provide free lunch / good coffee / mineral water and make sure that it is tasty and healthy. I believe that eating pizza / other types of junk food for years can be devastating to physical health and mental performance (although some people may be brilliant enough to do well despite such a diet).
Software which enforces eye-breaks and suggests exercises is very beneficial. We use workrave but I've had good experiences with Break Reminder too.
The interruptions take a while to get used to but are nothing compared to the disruption of losing employees to rsi and back injuries.
We go to lunch with each other and encourage each other to eat healthy. Management is clueless of that, and will take us to greasy italian for special occasions. But since these are extremely rare, we go anyway (we're developers, we don't pass up free food).
Here we get a free fruit once a week.
Don't know if it actually changes anything, but I appreciate the thought.
We tend to take the elevator down to reception to collect them though, not sure if that cancels out the benefits or not!