THE world’s biggest retailer wants to introduce working practices that will deter overweight people from applying for jobs in its stores.

Fat and unfit workers could soon find themselves outcasts on the shopfloor if other retailers decide to adopt a similar strategy.

In an offensive against obesity, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, plans to make physical exercise a part of every employee’s working day, helping to dissuade unhealthy jobseekers from joining the company.

The strategy, disclosed in a leaked memo from a senior executive to the Wal-Mart board, proposes that all roles should encourage physical activity, such as trolley-stacking for cashiers in its supermarkets.

It also suggests that a culture change to promote health and tackle obesity would reduce absenteeism, improve efficiency, cut costs such as healthcare payouts and drive out the lazy.

Such an approach by the American retail giant, which owns the Asda chain of supermarkets in Britain, is likely to be watched carefully by many big business rivals.

In the Wal-Mart memo, seen by The Times, it is noted that the company’s 1.3 million workers in America, most of whom are low-income earners, “are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases”. It cites diabetes and coronary artery disease, both emerging problems in Britain.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart’s executive vice-president for benefits, suggests that the company arrange for “all jobs to include some physical activity (eg, all cashiers do some cart-gathering)”. The memo also proposes that employees pay more for their spouses’ health insurance and calls for a cut to some wage contributions and stopping company-paid life insurance policies.

It also advises promoting health savings accounts, a form of healthcare investment considered more attractive to younger, healthier workers.

“It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier workforce than to change behaviour in an existing one,” it notes. “These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart.”

A spokeswoman for Asda said that it was unaware of any communication with Wal-Mart over the policy, but the parent company tended to allow the supermarket chain to devise its own work strategies.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which have soared by 15 per cent a year on average since 2002.

The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion (£560 million) a year by 2011, the memo estimated.

In an interview reported yesterday in The New York Times, Ms Chambers said that she was focusing not on cutting costs but on serving employees better by improving health and giving them more choices on their benefits.

While Britain has yet to experience obesity on the scale of the US, where more than 5 per cent of the population is now categorised as morbidly obese, other “fat-ist” strategies have emerged in recent years. They include higher life insurance premiums for the overweight. In Britain it is estimated that one in five men and a quarter of women are obese, and that as many as 30,000 people die prematurely every year from obesity-related conditions.

Such is the concern over rising obesity that the Government last year announced the introduction of “lifestyle gurus” on the NHS to help people to lose weight, stop smoking and improve their diets.

The policy, set out in the public health White Paper, allows people to get a referral from their GP or other health services for a fitness programme with an approved health trainer.

Obesity is now five times the level of 25 years ago, with three-quarters of adults thought to be overweight or obese, and costs Britain £7.4 billion a year. England has the fastest increasing weight problem in Europe, with childhood obesity increasing threefold in 20 years.

Last year a report on obesity by the health select committee gave warning of a “doomsday scenario” where thousands would lose limbs and sight from fat-related illnesses, particularly late-onset diabetes.

AN EVER-EXPANDING PROBLEM

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