How sports can be key to a more inclusive workplace

Frederic Joye of software development outsourcing company Arcanys has personally experienced the transformative—and healing—power of sports in his life and work

When I was an eight-year-old growing up in Switzerland, I experienced a deep trauma that changed me forever. As a victim of a crime, I shut down mentally: where I was once an outgoing child, I became withdrawn. My mind suppressed the memory of it, but my body couldn’t, and my weight piled on from constant overeating.

Things only reached crisis point years later when I almost crashed my car after becoming overwhelmed by a wave of negative emotions. Desperate for help, I called a friend whose mother was a psychiatrist, and that’s when my slow journey toward health and healing started. It was a complicated process—I had to end my relationship with my longtime girlfriend whom I loved but felt conflicted about, as I’d long struggled with what society expected of me—that I’d find a wife and have children in a “perfect” house with a white picket fence.

Ultimately, it was through the internet that I discovered a community of people facing similar struggles, giving me for the first time the feeling of how powerful and freeing it was to feel supported and accepted.

Soon after, I felt motivated enough to start cultivating healthier habits, like eating mindfully and exercising regularly at the gym. I weighed close to 100kg when I started my health journey, and over time, lost 35 kg. This personal win in turn empowered me to become an entrepreneur and move to Asia when I turned 30, where I eventually co-founded Arcanys, a software development outsourcing company in the Philippines.

While my business partner and I spent the first five years working very hard to build our company, our priority from the outset was always to create an inclusive work culture that helped its people thrive long-term.

We have introduced “Wellness Wednesdays”, weekly talks which covered key topics such as good nutrition, LGBTQ issues and sexual health—a sensitive but necessary matter in the Philippines, where many remain unaware of how sexually transmitted diseases spread. We’re currently working on expanding the scope of these talks to boost diversity and inclusion efforts. We've only just scratched the surface in these talks, and now are working on it for the month of June and will be implementing better diversity and inclusion initiatives within the company this year.

One of the longest-running efforts in the company, however, is something that is close to my heart. Having personally experienced how sports can build confidence and resilience, I wanted to make sure that everyone could have access to these benefits. Our company started partially sponsoring employees to compete in Spartan’s first races in Cebu in 2018, then experimented with setting up a Spartan training ground there. Since then, we have taken employees to different places in the Philippines and Malaysia to race, and started offering free gym memberships to our team as well.

In a world that often emphasises our differences, sports have the unique ability to bring people together. Embracing sports not only brings physical and mental benefits, it also creates bonds and bridges gaps between people from diverse backgrounds. This is especially relevant in the workplace, where promoting inclusivity is crucial for fostering a positive and productive environment.

Companies throughout Asia have successfully harnessed sports to increase inclusivity at work. For example, DBS Bank Singapore’s DBS Sports Connection programme encourages employees of all levels and abilities to participate in various sports activities, such as dragon boating, running and cycling. Tata Steel’s Adventure Foundation, meanwhile, organises adventure sports activities like rock climbing, rafting and mountaineering. These activities allow employees from diverse backgrounds and abilities to challenge themselves, fostering camaraderie and teamwork.

We encouraged employees to participate in events like Spartan Races, where they discovered their true potential by pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones. Through these races, those who had initially felt hesitant or limited in their abilities realised that their sexual orientation, skin colour, or any other defining characteristic did not define their capabilities. It was incredible to witness the positive impact these efforts had, as I personally saw many team members blossom, owning their bodies and realise that they were capable of much more than just, say, writing code at work.

Apart from promoting togetherness, sports can unlock social access. In the Philippines, for example, being LGBTQ often meant you were confined to certain social circles, as people here are open in some ways but not others. Thankfully, this is slowly changing, but I think sports has the potential to dramatically catalyse this process.

I am a huge fan of CrossFit because it doesn’t just focus on cardio but also trains key areas such as strength, agility and speed. Furthermore, everyone challenges themselves together for one hour, and that creates fellowship and fosters a positive culture where people help each other succeed. After completing the workout of the day, for example, you cheer on the ones behind you. Overall, CrossFit rewards effort rather than result.

To share these benefits with more of our staff and the public, we are in the process of opening a new CrossFit box near our office. Our employees can exercise here for free and have access to two senior CrossFit coaches from France as well as two dieticians.

We gave our staff free smartwatches and gym memberships and designed an app that tracks their workouts. We’ve created a novel way to incentivise exercise: not only are workouts counted as company time, but employees receive 50 pesos for themselves for each session and earn another 50 pesos for the Arcanys Early Learning Foundation, which we established in 2012. The foundation aims to instil basic maths and logic skills to preschool children in Cebu City’s underprivileged areas. We’ve helped about 8000 families so far, in part due to our team’s enthusiastic participation. When we started this scheme, just 15 per cent of our staff participated. This has now grown to over 50 per cent, and last year we raised US$15,000 for the foundation. My next goal is for Arcanys to become a B-corp-certified company—it’s a natural progression for companies like ours which seek to build a more equitable, inclusive and regenerative economy.

Research has repeatedly shown that the impact of sports on workplace inclusivity extends well beyond the physical realm. Engaging in sports cultivates a sense of community and teamwork, and the resilience, discipline, and determination developed through sports influence other aspects of life, including work. By providing a platform for employees to come together, sports breaks down barriers and create opportunities for dialogue, understanding and empathy. They can also empower the disenfranchised to push back against those who try to exploit or diminish them, something I wish I’d been able to do as a child all those years ago. Ultimately, sports is a powerful tool for increasing inclusivity in the workplace because they not only help build more effective, productive teams, but they also offer invaluable opportunities for us to recognise our shared humanity.

Above Frederic Joye is Co-founder and President, Head of Growth at Arcanys, a Swiss software development outsourcing company in the Philippines, which specialises in building highly skilled teams of developers for tech-enabled companies. He is also co-founder and partner at Arcanys Ventures, which backs entrepreneurs through tech resources investment across 2nd and 3rd funding rounds.

This piece is part of a collaboration between Tatler Asia and Young Presidents’ Organisation (YPO), a global leadership community of chief executives, which counts more than thirty thousand members from 142 countries among its members.

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Sports can be key to fostering inclusivity in the workplace