The manager at the heart of role-playing games regarding sports and physical activity in the workplace

Sports and physical activity (SPA) in the workplace is thought to be beneficial for improving team cohesion and employees’ health and well-being. Despite preventive efforts from some companies to offer SPA to their employees, participation rates remain very low, limiting the impacts in terms of health and economic benefits. Organizational constraints and lack of support from managers could be explanatory factors. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for managers’ lack of adherence to SPA in the workplace. 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers (8 middle managers and 11 first-line managers) to describe and analyze their perception of SPA in the workplace. A thematic analysis was used to meet the objective of this article. On a daily basis, managers are confronted with paradoxical demands that prevent them from getting involved in the implementation of SPA in the workplace and thus from promoting it to employees, which in turn limits their participation. Better involving managers in the construction of SPA in the workplace could be a solution to overcome some role conflicts and better legitimize SPA in the workplace as an integrated strategy and policy.