My company has a gym, a nice swimming pool, squash court, badminton court et al but the employees are not allowed to use during working hours. The employees can only use from 6 am - 8 am and from 5 pm - 8 pm.
The reason behind this policy is based on the below story. One of our clients during their visit to our company, questioned our senior management like this: "How do you guarantee that we get a full day's work from your employees when we see your employees working out in the gym during lunch hour and other times of the day?" To which our management response was the above policy.
The problem I have with this policy is I have never been able to use these facilities because of various reasons (like 6 am is too early for me to be in office, 5 pm also does not work out as some meetings go beyond 5pm etc.). I would have preferred the facilities to be available throughout the day so that I can choose to work out if I had an hour or so free time available. Also because of the above policy, gym is almost always full with long wait lines at the treadmill etc.
My question is how differently our senior management should have responded to the client's question (which in my opinion is a fair question, since they are paying) instead of coming up with this policy (which also in my opinion is a very honest approach by my employer, but does not really help employees in using the facilities).
