Many staff at FitSense Australia have a long history of working with elite athletes. This includes Olympians right through to professional football players. Back in 2004 our staff started to apply some of their skills in the corporate environment through our work with the Australian Customs Service.

This work involved establishing fitness requirements for officers and then putting them through a regular battery of fitness tests to ensure they were fit for duty.

This approach to safety and duty of care is something that should be a high priority for all organisations. If staff are not physically capable of undertaking tasks related to their job function, then not only are they at greater risk of injury, but they are also putting their colleagues at risk.

Research has indicated that employees undertaking physical job roles are rarely stretched to their maximum physical ability. This has been highlighted in various articles relating to firefighters, which concluded that most firefighters were only pushed to their maximum physical ability approximately once per year. While this isn’t frequent, the potential consequence of these officers not being ready to undertake these maximal intensity tasks is severe as it may result in injury or even death (remembering the severe and often unsafe environment that many of these people work in).

So does this mean that everyone undertaking physical job roles needs to pass a mandatory fitness test? No. But what it does mean is that each job role needs to be assessed according to its demands in order to determine if a basic level of fitness is a requirement for the role.

Just remember, this is employee health and safety we’re talking about, and every organisation has a duty of care towards their employees.