In what seems to be a mishandling of a well-intended gesture, Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath announced on Thursday that the firm will be running a ‘fun health program,’ where Zerodha employees will get half-salary bonuses for losing weight.
According to Kamath’s latest tweets, the CEO explained that anyone at Zerodha who has a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25 will get half a month’s pay as a bonus.
We are running a fun health program at @zerodhaonline. Anyone on our team with BMI <25 gets half a month’s salary as bonus. The avg BMI of our team is 25.3 & if we can get to <24 by Aug, everyone gets another ½ month as a bonus. It’d be fun to compete with other companies 1/3
— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) April 7, 2022
He then went on to further explain the rules of the challenge, roping in the idea of a collective charitable donation, while encouraging other companies to try something similar.
The lowest average BMI or the largest change in average BMI wins. The winner chooses a charity everyone else contributes to. Maybe a health tech company can run the initiative.
— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) April 7, 2022
If you want to do this at your company, do post in the comments.
Happy world health day! 2/3
41-year-old Kamath is a fitness freak himself and occasionally posts pictures of his gym progress and shares his ketogenic diet, sugar-free lifestyle to his followers, and has encouraged others to stay fit, especially through the lockdown.
I’ve always been fit but struggled to look fit due to my love for food & sweets. Got worse during the lockdown, added 7kgs & body fat of 27%. Changed things from Aug & now at 21%. The goal is 15% by this Aug. Sharing this like an 18yr old so have some pressure to get there 1/2 pic.twitter.com/A3gc3e12yx
— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) February 13, 2021
Kamath’s team, unfortunately, seems to have struck a wrong chord with followers, who immediately tore apart the programme for potentially ‘fatshaming’ some employees and coming off as ‘problematic, ‘weird’, and ‘stupid.’
For starters, Kamath’s team failed to consider that BMI is a notoriously outdated and ineffective way of tracking true physical fitness. BMI simply divides weight by height; it can provide a fairly decent index of the ‘average person’ but most people don’t fall into that very narrow parameter.
Take Arnold Schwarzenegger for example. In his prime, his BMI was recorded at 32.5, which would leave him without a bonys if he worked at Zerodha today, despite being one of the fittest people in the world. It works the other way too. Some individuals with eating disorders such as bulimia may pass the BMI test — at the cost of their greater health and nutritional needs.
While Nithin Kamath did add that BMI wasn’t the perfect way to track fitness…
PS: I know BMI isn’t the best measure to track health & fitness, but it is the easiest way to get started. With health & most other things in life, the most important bit is to get started.
— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) April 7, 2022
Btw, walking 10,000 steps daily is a great start if you’ve been wanting to get healthy 3/3
… it was too little too late to put this message out there. The Zerodha CEO was immediately ripped apart on social media by experts and everyday folks alike:
And at the worst, can even lead to eating disorders or mental health issues.
— Apoorva (@apooorva) April 7, 2022
I’m a corporate wellness coach working extensively on health at every size. I could help with better goal setting to be more inclusive and less problematic goals.
So problematic.
— Rubina Mulchandani (@Rubina_BigB_EF) April 8, 2022
People can have higher BMIs for a variety of health issues. This is not incentivising good health. This is discriminatory, myopic, offensive.
As a CVD researcher, let me also say that BMI as a health marker is almost obsolete now, with many other factors at play.
Several people also criticized the program for being toxic – and suggested that healthier, more realistic long-term goals were a better idea.
Totally agreed. The proposed challenge is pretty toxic, demeaning, demotivating & doesn’t promote overall well-being of all the employees in the organisation creating differences, discontent & propagating into self doubt, anxiety & what not if they are already at the edge.
— Amrit Sreenivas (@AmritSreenivas) April 8, 2022
Ofcourse, a few Zerodha users also made a joke at the challenge’s expense.
Any plans for Traders with BMI < 25?
— Piyush Chaudhry (@piyushchaudhry) April 7, 2022
While Kamath’s challenge may need some revisioning, it’s heartening to see so many individuals recognizing the problem, and banding together to spread a more inclusive, healthy idea of personal fitness.
(Featured Image Credits: Zerodha, @Nithin0dha/Twitter)
