Taco Bell Keeps Health Program in Good Condition : The firm’s corporate headquarters in Irvine offers a workout and wellness plan that helps keep employees healthier and less stressed out.

Climbing the corporate ladder may be grueling, but it hardly qualifies as aerobic exercise.

All too often, putting your career at the top of the priority list means putting fitness at the bottom. What with breakfast meetings and stay-late evening projects tacked onto an already crowded working day--with a hurried, at-the-desk lunch in the middle--who can spare time for a regular exercise program?

It’s no wonder that by the time they’re ready for retirement, too many workers also find themselves ready for cardiac rehab programs where they can repair some of the damage caused by spending decades behind a desk.

But at Taco Bell corporate headquarters in Irvine, it’s possible for every employee, from the top executives on the 12th floor to the newest hire in the mail room, to say, “Hold my calls” and work out in the company gym.

“You can’t just cancel an important meeting or something like that,” says Tom Wagner, who works in the company’s financial planning department and works out regularly in the fitness facility. “But you can block it out in your schedule and everybody can look in the computer and see you’re not available for that time.”

Impromptu workouts are not only permitted but encouraged, as long as employees don’t have deadlines or meetings.

“Last week at 3:30 in the afternoon, my boss just got up and went to work out,” Wagner says. “The stress was really getting to him, but when he came back an hour later he was relaxed and ready to work again.”

The company’s fitness facility is open for business from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. every weekday. It has weight machines, treadmills, exercise bikes, stair climbers, rowing machines, company-subsidized aerobics classes, men’s and women’s saunas, spas and a laundry facility. Hair dryers, shampoo and deodorant are provided for employees’ convenience.

For those who prefer other forms of exercise, the Taco Bell fitness program administers team sports such as volleyball and basketball, matches tennis partners and makes arrangements for employees to use the pool at a nearby hotel.

Employees who want to become healthier but aren’t ready for an exercise program aren’t left out, either. Fitness center director Tina Mordock arranges classes in health-related subjects from nutrition and smoking cessation to prenatal care, as well as producing a regular newsletter full of health and fitness information.

The nutrition information, quite naturally, includes a big thumbs-up for the food on the Taco Bell menu, which features no lard or tropical oils, 91% fat-free chicken and many items that are low in salt and less than 300 calories.

The emphasis on wellness comes from Taco Bell’s parent company, Pepsico Inc., says Elliot Bloom, senior director of public relations. “The company really believes its employees are its most important asset, and we want to keep them happy, healthy and productive,” he says.

Pepsico corporate headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., opened its employee fitness facility nearly 20 years ago, and the program was so successful it was set up at other subsidiary headquarters: Frito-Lay in Dallas; Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kan., and Kentucky Fried Chicken, now called KFC, in Louisville, Ky.

The fitness facility was designed into the Taco Bell building, which opened in 1987.

Bloom is one of the company fitness program’s success stories. After friendly but persistent encouragement from colleague Rusty Hagemann, manager of administration who oversees the fitness program, Bloom dropped 40 pounds, and “my body fat went from 28% to 6.9%,” he says. He has also run three marathons.

“If this facility hadn’t been here, I don’t think I could have done it,” Bloom says. “But this way I’m able to keep up with an aggressive workout schedule, as well as a very demanding job.”

Although combining business with exercise isn’t ideal, Hagemann says some Taco Bell corporate workers do just that when pressed for time.

“There’ve been groups who’ve held meetings while they were out running together,” he says.

Bloom confesses to having dictated a few speeches for corporate executives into a hand-held tape recorder so he could keep up his running schedule on busy days.

Hagemann is a former marathon runner himself, but he downplays that as part of an overall effort to make the fitness program less intimidating for newcomers.

“We’ve purposely put the cardiovascular equipment in the middle of the room and the weights off to the sides so that we have more of a wellness focus,” he says. “That makes it more accessible for people who’ve never used a gym.”

About a fourth of the company’s 650 or so employees use the facility regularly, and as many as 75% have participated in some aspect of the fitness program at some time.

Payroll supervisor Bob Webb has been using the facility off and on for the last 3 1/2 years, but he says he’s been much more regular about it for the past six months. He runs at lunchtime, then rides the exercise bike. “I go on a lot of mountain hiking trips, and this has given me much better stamina. I just climbed Lassen Volcanic Peak two weeks ago, and I had absolutely no soreness the next day.”

Other than that, Webb says, he’s not training for any specific goal. “My goal is just to stay alive,” he says.

“I am never tired after lunch,” Wagner says. “Never, never ever. I work out, then I eat something at my desk. You get hooked on it. I don’t think I would go to work for another large company unless they had a fitness center like this.”

Potential employees are routinely shown the fitness facility when they come to the building, and Hagemann says it helps not only in recruiting but in retaining employees.

In the long term, healthier employees also cost the company less because they’re less likely to suffer not only short-term illnesses, but also more serious ones such as heart attacks or back injuries.

But Hagemann says the company doesn’t try to measure its savings.

“It’s very hard to quantify, for one thing,” he says. “But any company that does that isn’t truly capturing the spirit. We just want our employees to be healthy.”