Fittest Team
BATS Global Markets, team 1
Fittest Team Fittest Individuals Most Improved Teams Most Improved Individuals
You don’t go from start-up company to billion-dollar revenues in six years without some kind of competitive fire baking the organizational cake. So it should be of little surprise to anyone who knows Joe Ratterman that BATS Global Markets’ would enter the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge and come out smoking.
For one, the chief executive at the Lenexa-based stock exchange won the individual crown of Fittest Man Under 50. More on that in the pages to follow. For another, one of his two teams earned a share of first place in the Most Improved Team category. Again, more on that achievement in subsequent pages.
The first BATS team, though, was really cooking. By running off with the title of Fittest Team, as well, the company is the first in the four years of the Challenge to earn top honors on each side of the competition—for overall fitness and for level of improvement.
“We shared with everybody on the staff the fact that we were getting into it; everybody knew that the executives were stepping up to enter this competition with other Kansas City executives and companies,” Ratterman said. The formal announcement of winners in this issue of Ingram’s, he said, represents “a clear signal to the full team and all the associates that we think about these issues at the top as senior managers who are leading by example and putting themselves out there to be measured and to improve themselves.”
BATS’ Team No 1—consisting of chief executive officer Joe Ratterman, chief financial officer Brian Schell, chief operating officer Chris Isaacson and HR director Thad Prososki—turned in an average score of 140.75 on the 150-point scale for the 15 health indicators that make up the competition’s scoring matrix. It was the only one of dozens of competing teams to cross that threshold.
Having your human resources guy in the mix helps reinforce a signal to all employees in these days of corporate concern over higher costs for company-paid health insurance. “It will come as no surprise to any of our associates that our senior leadership would not only want to be involved in a fitness challenge, but would also compete fiercely to win,” Prososki said. “That spirit of competition aligns with our culture and reinforces the benefits of committing to fitness goals.”
The format of the Challenge, he said, reinforces BATS’ own culture and keeps the competitive juices flowing. Competition was a key element in structuring the Challenge when it launched in 2009, as was the belief that executive leadership matters—that if companies are going to truly get a handle on both health-care insurance costs and the harder-to-track costs of employee illness and absenteeism, the impetus for cultural change comes from the top.
The culture in Lenexa, though, didn’t require much of a change. “The organization was already thinking fitness and health and wellness,” Ratterman said. “This is a great way to reinforce that message with the team, but it’s not going to change trajectory—it’s just one more visible event for the staff to see, and continues to send the message that we believe in their health and fitness, as well.”
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Fittest Execs Challenge All-Time Top 10
2014 Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Registration Form
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