Benefits Buzz

Do As I Say And Not As I Do When it Comes to Wellness?

Could research in ethics and management shed any light on the impact that culture can play with regards to wellness? 

Studies have shown that management behavior influences workplace ethics.  A Deloitte and Touche study showed that among working adults, the behavior of management (42%) and that of direct supervisors (36%) were considered the top two factors contributing to the promotion of an ethical workplace.  Ethics training ranked much lower (16%) as a factor.

Other studies have shown that corporate codes of conduct and the degree of "implementation strength and embeddedness" of such codes seems to deter self-reported unethical behavior in employees.


If it works for ethics, can it work for wellness?

If corporate code and management conduct are so influential when it comes to ethics, could their example also improve workplace health and productivity?  A new body of studies in health promotion seem to point in that direction. 

An article published in the Journal of Occupational And Environmental Medicine, looked at nine quality components of worksite health management programs and compared the results of those programs between best practice and common practice organizations.  Best practice organizations showed higher levels of program engagement than common practice organizations and were 1-2.3 times more likely to see population health improve.

Everyone wants to be the best
So what are some of the distinguishing characteristics of best in class programs?

• Comprehensive program design
• Integrated incentives
• Comprehensive communications
• Management support
• Dedicated onsite staff
• Multiple program modalities
• Health awareness programs
• Biometrics health screenings
• Vendor integration

The first step in really showing the value of any wellness program is always to form a cogent plan, make the case to management and then to execute that plan with enough discipline and flexibility to achieve results.  It's no small job, but what worth doing is?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

Reconsidering Giving Away Soda At Work

What are YOU spending on Wellness?

• $200 per participant in incentives?
• $40-50 per participant for biometrics screenings?
• $6 per participant for a health risk assessment?
• $4-15 pepm for health coaching?
• $2 pepm for incentive management?
• $200 per on site class?
• Goodness knows how much on staff time and consultants and the like, on program administration, and measuring of your butt kicking wellness program.

BUT does it every worry you that the $.75 peps (yes, that's per employee per soda) that you spend on providing free pop is corroding the value of what you have been spending on prevention?

Glucose, Fructose, or Sucrose?  Whoknose?
Does a sugar by any other name taste as sweet?

Most of us forgot the difference between glucose, fructose and sucrose long ago while starring wistfully at our high school heartthrob during chemistry. It wasn't something we needed to know and, I mean come on, who can tell the difference right? All of them taste sugary.

So, what's the difference? Well, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers from the University of California, Davis discovered that people consuming fructose-sweetened drinks showed an increase in a particular kind of fat that embeds itself between tissues in organs. They were also less sensitive to insulin, showed elevated blood levels of lipids, increased fat production in the liver, and elevated LDL (so-called 'bad' cholesterol) and larger increases in blood triglycerides. Yikes!

According to the study, those drinking glucose-sweetened beverages showed none of these changes. Unfortunately for us, most of the sugars that are readily available in the store come in the form of high fructose corn syrup or sucrose (table sugar).

So, uh, skip the soda and maybe provide a fruit bowl instead?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

The Bun In The Oven & The State of Preventative Health Care...

Here are some snippets from an email I received from the US Department of Health and Human Services today:

"We know that the health care crisis impacts every American, but our mothers, daughters and sisters are paying a particularly heavy price. Today, 21 million women and girls are uninsured. Women who try to purchase insurance find that the private market is often stacked against them. Premiums in the private market for young women are often higher than they are for men. In some states, insurance companies can legally discriminate against women, and leave them with higher health care bills or inadequate coverage.

We know America's women can't afford to wait for comprehensive health reform. Roadblocks to Health Care reports:

• In the individual insurance market, women are often charged higher premiums than men during their reproductive years. Holding other factors constant, a 22 year old woman can be charged one and a half times the premium of a 22 year old man.
• In a recent national survey, more than half of women (52%) reported delaying or avoiding needed care because of cost, compared with 39% of men."

Why are women charged more?
Among other things, because we can get pregnant and pregnancy in the US is very expensive. We therefore use more health care and are charged more or denied insurance coverage. But here is the crazy part, folks: women cannot self-impregnate!

Not long ago, I received a very personal lesson on the wacky state of preventative health care for maternity. As an otherwise extremely healthy person with a good track record for taking care of myself and little in the way of worrisome health risks, I'd gone the way of financial prudence. I purchased a health plan with a high deductible, but with inexpensive co-pays on doctor's visits and alternative medicine as well as discounts on pharmaceuticals, should I need them.

This was all working out very well. I continued to do my part for the team by taking good care of myself, paying my insurance company dutifully and not using any medical care! I was mentally prepared should a catastrophe befall me. I figured, should that happen, my piddly $5k deductible would seem like chump change in comparison to what I would otherwise have had to spend out of pocket for catastrophic care. All those years of paying unused premiums to my carrier would have been put to good use!

Then, about 6 months ago I developed a small "medical" problem. That's right. I got pregnant. Ok, so this is no catastrophic illness or disease condition, right? I mean, there are more than 6 billion people on earth and, unless I am mistaken, pregnancy is the way we all got here. As a scientist, I will grudgingly agree that pregnancy looks suspiciously like a highly evolved parasitic infection. Yet, unlike malaria - for instance - my health plan wasn't ponying up any cash for pregnancy vaccines or other preventative measures against this "disease."

So, it was one $20 co pay with my primary care doc, the cost of a pregnancy confirmation test, and then I was on my own. At that point my options were to start clocking maternity care against my catastrophic deductible. After meeting that limit I'd pay 30-70%. After doing the math, I realized that if I ended up in a hospital for a routine, healthy birth, with no serious complications, that I would most likely end up paying $7,500+ out of pocket for my "disease."

Compare this to a $2000-2500 bill if I pay cash for a home birth with a certified nurse/midwife, including all prenatal scans and labs and two months of well baby care, and it left me scratching my head. Now if there were complications (need for surgery, premature birth, gestational diabetes, preclampsia, etc.) that led to a need for emergency medical intervention then, as I said, there is not much room to gripe over the deductible when so many dollars and someone's life are on the line. Yet when all signs in my case (and in the case of nearly 75% of pregnancies that come full term) point to a completely normal, healthy pregnancy and birth, I am perplexed about how this situation serves any sort of greater good.

In my case, I simply opted to pay the midwife out of pocket and should an emergency arise, well, it's an emergency - deductible be damned. Yet I think about all of the women whose partners may have left them; women whose partners lost their jobs; women who have lost their own job and are not sure how to afford COBRA, but would be denied individual coverage due to their "pre-existing condition"; women who are short on the cash to be able to afford the relatively less expensive but still cost prohibitive bill for good prenatal care and who end up with very costly bills later on down the line due to having delayed or avoided care.

And these mothers who were impregnated by partners who - in most cases - will not be denied coverage or see rate increases due to their partners' "disease," are left unable to pay and to pass on the costs to the remaining payers in the current insurance system - thus becoming contributors to the astronomical rise is insurance rates. These are not some handful of bad people "out there." If you are reading this blog, breathing and have a pulse right now then you have a pregnant woman to thank.

People are not going to stop making more people, people. It just isn't going to happen. So what are our options when it comes to taking pregnant women off of the bad apple list with regards to health care costs?

1. Provide safe, effective and affordable contraception and family planning services to women of reproductive age (yes, this means after menarche) .
2. Ensure that pre-natal care is covered as preventative care under health plans.
3. Stratify pregnancies by risk and ensure that health plans cover lower cost but safe and effective birth options such as licensed birthing centers and midwife assisted home births for low risk pregnancies.
4. Ensure that health plans rapidly identify and direct high risk pregnancies to maternity care and coaching programs that help manage behavioral risk factors and more closely monitor pregnancy through birth.
5. If you are an employer providing maternity benefits and health insurance for your employees and spouses, make sure you emphasize prental care and maternity benefits offered by your health plan. Consider setting aside lactation rooms to encourage breastfeeding mothers to pump so that they can continue to feed their babies breastmilk (which has health benefits for the mother and child).
6. Support legislation that accomplishes all of the above and funds community health education centers that provide outreach, education and services to uninsured populations - eliminating a cost barrier which might keep pregnant women from seeking care until it is too late.

If altruism isn't your bag, then consider that early prenatal care helps all payers in the health insurance game by lowering costs shared by the pool. And if you are still feeling the glow from that gift that had your mom in tears last weekend, then - hey - do it for the lady who loved you enough to endure nausea, swollen feet, ill-fitting clothes and a whole lot more to bring you into this world.

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

What Would You Do If Your CEO Got Swine Flu?

Get Well Soon, CEO!

Finding an executive manager is never easy. And once you do find a fearless leader, myriad cultural, economic and - yes - even personal health issues can threaten to throw the whole situation off the rails.

"The impact of replacing senior managers, especially due to sudden health issues, is even more acute than normal turnover. A study by Deloitte shows that 47% of companies cite their biggest people-related challenge as leadership development and succession planning," says Candie Fisher,Director of Client Development for Generator Group, a talent management firm based in Portland, OR

Steve Jobs' much publicized cancer struggle sent off a flurry of speculation about Apple's readiness to replace him.  Last year,CFOs at nCipher and Servocell resigned due to ill health. In 2004 McDonald's CEO, Jim Cantalupo died at age 60 of a heart attack. Charles Bell, who replaced Cantalupo, was diagnosed with colorectal cancer only a month after being named chief executive. 

And while the press might not have noticed that your company's top brass was 'not strong enough' to attend a meeting, that's just the kind of news that makes fine grist for the company rumor mill.  If people are worried about your firm's financial performance, an ailing leader's plight isn't exactly the kind of news that will boost productivity. 

Executives Are People, Too!

Despite their strategic importance to an organization, executive leaders are in many other ways just like everyone else. They have bad hair days (case in point, get a load of Bill Gates and the Microsoft crew in this photo)!

They get sick - often due to preventable causes - just like the rest of us.

Sharon McDowell is an exercise physiologist for the Center for Creative Leadership's Leadership At The Peak Program. The program has looked at the overall health of senior executives and leaders with more than 15 years of management experience, in the top three tiers of the organization, with leadership responsibility for 500 or more people and/or executive staff functions. McDowell says that of the nearly 3,000 program participants screened 58% had high cholesterol; 60% are overweight or obese; and about 50% don't exercise regularly.

Executive managers lead high stress lifestyles and often lack the time for structured exercise. The World Heart Federation and the US Federal Centers for Disease Control say failure to exercise is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.

Unexpected leadership transitions are costly, says Fisher, "At the top levels, many companies do not have a strong program in place to fill senior leadership positions from within. As a result, fully-loaded recruiting costs of 1.5 times the annual salary are commonplace."

Fisher recommends companies implement a two-pronged strategy of keeping their senior managers focused on both wellness and succession planning. "Executive level jobs can be stressful, reducing executives health risk through wellness programs can increase leadership productivity thus improving their ability to mentor, groom, and retain high potential talent," she states.

Increasing executives' personal well-being might also improve their effectiveness. McDowell's research has shown that executives that exercise are more likely to be perceived as more energetic and effective than their non-exercising peers in 360 degree management surveys.

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

An Apple A Day or A Bad Apple? Where Health and Productivity Meet.

An Apple A Day or A Bad Apple?

I was recently listening to an episode of This American Life entitled, "Ruining It For The Rest of Us" where they featured stories about how easily one person's behavior can have a contaminating effect on others. One particularly haunting story covered the research of Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, who placed a confederate in a group and observed the impact that this "bad apple" had on the rest of the group. In nearly every case, the influence of even one spoiler tarnished the productivity and the morale of the group.
One thing that the researchers in Felp's study didn't look at, however, is that poor health can impact mood. Could an apple a day and a brief jaunt outdoors help the bad apple get his mood back on track? Or could workplace health and wellness be a protective means of coping for those who might otherwise be affected by a bad apple?

How do health and mood interact in your workplace? Have you seen an instance where a bad apple lowered the productivity of a work group and subsequently led to more sick days or a reluctance of team members to show up for work?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

 

Sending Your Employees to Fat Camp...

Every kid can probably remember a schoolmate who was sent away to fat camp and forced to endure not only the mockery of fellow children, but also bland, paltry portions of undressed salad and other "diet" foods. Losing weight was never cool, but with the mercurial rise of reality shows, even fat camp has been buffed to a high gloss.

Shows like The Biggest Loser and other reality diet shows feature diehard trainers who effectively supplant the participants' "lack of will" with their own shrill and uberfit war cries. They harass participants through boot camp-like workouts (4-6 hours worth at a pop) and analyze their every bite. The results are - well - dramatic enough to capture the attention of a rapt television audience.

Corporate wellness programs seem to be picking up on the trend. Home grown Biggest Loser competitions are popping up all over in America's offices. Sure, this approach can work. Particularly when on someone else's dime and when exercising 4-6 hours a day, but for the average working Joe or Josephine, expecting dramatic weight loss can be a setup for disappointment.

And for the ambitious wellness program director? For starters, your program might not actually be reaching the least healthy among your workers. A skinny pack-a-day smoker who does not exercise (unless you count lifting beer to mouth) and has a family history of illness may not have a lot to lose when it comes to shedding pounds.

While it may be tempting to assume that we can look at someone who is obese or overweight and judge their level of health, studies show that a moderately active obese or overweight worker is at less risk of disease than a thin co-worker with high stress, sedentary lifestyle, poor sleep habits, and a lousy diet. Some of the more serious risk factors for cardiac conditions and stroke (think: cholesterol and high blood pressure) are not necessarily something you can determine by looking at a scale.

On top of that, making weight loss into a competition with big prizes on the line not only ignores the fact that healthy weight varies greatly for every body, but there are actually plenty of unhealthy ways to show dramatic weight loss (think: dehydration, binging, diuretics, stimulants). About 65% of the human body is made of water. Do the math on that. Ask any amateur wrestler (you know the guys who basically wear garbage bags as they run around the block prior to being weighed in).  They can give you a few easy hints for ways to manipulate scale weight. Such tactics can dramatically alter scale weight; however, they put unnecessary stress on the body (dehydration and muscle loss) and the results are typically temporary at best.

Additionally, men have an advantage in the weight loss game. Men's hormonal makeup and body composition allows their bodies to rev up the fat burning engines. Women, and particularly those undergoing hormonal changes such as menopause, can still see tremendous benefits from exercise, but thanks to their hormones and body composition will see more gradual weight loss than most men.

So to recap:

• 'Skinny smokers' have little incentive to get healthy - there's not much to lose and have you ever tried running a mile after a cig? It's not fun.
• Weight Loss competitions unnecessarily shame larger people. Health and its relationship to weight is complex. You could be singling out otherwise healthy people based mainly on their appearance, which is not exactly a textbook team building approach.
• The fix is in. Offering prizes can emphasize unhealthy weight loss methods and put men at an advantage over women.
• The graph below shows average excess medical cost per employee of various health risks. Do you think the Biggest Loser is going to do much to reduce the first two?

If your wellness goal is to improve the health of your workforce, emphasize friendly competition and team spirit, while improving productivity along the way, then is fat camp really for you?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

Worker Productivity and "Miracle-Gro" for Your Brain...

Dr. John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is an affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is also the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University.

So what does this guy, who knows a lot about brains and not just because his is obviously pretty high powered have to say about how to optimize our brains for work, play and study? Exercise. Yes. Not only does Medina show that exercise is the number one rule for brain health (hint: when our brain was designed regular movement was a fact of life for humans), but he strenuously emphasizes that our modern, sedentary work environment is actually hurting brain performance.

The US's labor landscape continues to undergo dramatic shifts. Manufacturing jobs are fading fast as the rise of the service economy dominates the landscape.  Even in the current downturn, many of the jobs that will grow as a result of the stimulus plan are in clean power, health care and any number of other fields that continue to experience increased modernization and interface with both people and information systems.

"It's good for us to displace low-wage, manual kinds of labor with higher-skill, higher-tech, higher-education-content labor," says Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President William Poole, who compares what's happening with the decline in agricultural employment of the early 20th century.

The problem is we are treating service based workers like factory workers. Workers' brain capacity is - at its core - the very product most service based companies sell; however, the sedentary cube land structured like an automotive assembly line is one of the least conducive set-ups for brain function.

Creative, effective ways to mobilize wellness at work will be central to revolutionizing the effectiveness of the knowledge-based worker. Corporate wellness efforts for such companies cannot simply be seen as a small fluff program for the motivated few who thrill at the thought of spandex leggings, step aerobics in the lunch room, or a gym membership on the company dime.

Wellness, when done right, is a strategic, integrated, and systematic approach for improving employee health, but also key to unleashing the very engine of human creativity - the brain.

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

Is Fast Food Nation Conspiring to Put You Out of Business?

British health experts have issued a health warning pertaining to the "Super Size" phenomenon in hospitality establishments. Yes, it has finally reached the UK. The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) states that 'two-for-one' or 'meal deal' offers encourage people to eat too much. Even though this super size trend is "old news" in the US, we have a headache that our buddies across the pond get to ignore - a hamburger today can equal a big fat medical bill for your company tomorrow.

When dining out, eating fast food or in a rush, the pressure to finish everything on the plate can lead to overeating. Most restaurants will serve more food than the body needs. When employees hustle back to their desks, take-out in hand, to tackle their afternoon work, their inattention to what's on their plate could easily lead to regular overeating and significant weight gain. 

Compare the difference in serving size (and calories) of some food and drinks 20 years ago versus today:

It doesn't cost a great deal to provide employees with quick handouts about smart tips for eating out, and most health carriers will offer you such materials for free.  Here's a classic: ask for a box before your food comes out. When your meal comes you can put some of the food in the box before you start eating and set it aside (out of sight, out of mind). When you finish the food on your plate, if you're still hungry, open the box and go for it. If not then you have some delicious leftovers for tomorrow.

Also, employees who haven't eaten breakfast may literally be starving by lunch - at least their body thinks they are in calorie deficit.  In addition, their lowered blood sugar is not exactly enhancing great brain or work performance.  When they do hit the cafeteria or the fast food cart down the street, their body will be crying out for calories, and their brain will undoubtedly give in to satisfy cravings for high sugar, high fat foods that will scratch the itch. 

So let's get creative here, which employees want to be the most well liked?  The dreaded candy bowl types.  What about an unusual perk where the company actually pays a fruit stipend to those employees - leaving little fruit bowls scattered around the office?  Also just plain old providing a bowl of fresh fruit at the front desk or in break rooms will allow employees' brains to stay powered up between breakfast and lunch and will satisfy their cravings in a much healthier fashion. 

Do you currently offer healthy alternatives in your cafeteria at a subsidized rate, or provide fresh and healthy snacks as alternatives to soda pop and high sugar drinks (yes, juice is high sugar)?

 

No?  Why not start now?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

It's The Little Things: When You Don't Measure Wellness, You Fail...

A lot of people think that being healthy is all about the stressful hour at the gym and an ascetic lifestyle/diet rivaling that of a cloistered monk (and not in one of those monasteries that brews yummy beer). The truth is actually a lot less likely to make it the stuff of a good television mini-series.

Small, intelligently thought out changes made consistently over long periods of time are much more likely to produce sustainable results than are heroic efforts that can only be sustained for a couple of months at a time. In wellness, it seems, pacing is key. This is true for both the individual wellness program and the corporate wellness program.

We will cover a corporate wellness example today.

When you don't measure, you fail.

True story. I talk to a lot of people about corporate wellness. Many people tell me they have a corporate wellness program in place. When I ask what program they have in place they typically rattle off one or all of the following answers: a wellness fair, an online portal offered for free or low cost by their health plan or Employee Assistance Program, a yoga class, on-site massage, a corporate gym membership.

My next question? "What is participation like in your {fill in random program here} program?"

The answer (normally a variation of one of two responses)

The truth: "I don't know," or, "It is pretty lousy - just a handful of people."

The euphemistic version of the truth cooked up to make the respondent feel better about spending money on this program:

Respondent: Well there are a couple of people here who seem to really like the program and {more totally anecdotal blah blah blah} there's been quite a positive response.
Me: So have you participated?
Respondent: ......
Me: So about how many people, would you say, have given you this positive feedback?
Respondent: A lot
Me: 5? 10?
Respondent: Well the Director's assistant...
Me: 2? 20?
Respondent: Maybe 3
Me: Out of how many employees?
Respondent: 2,000

Ok so the rosey assessment of their wellness offering is based on a sample size of less than 1% of their employee population??!?!?! I'm sorry, but in this economy please hope that I never am your manager. Because if I find out that you are justifying an expenditure with anecdotal feedback and a quantitative evaluation with a sample size of 0.0015% I will fire you.

Measurement helps you manage programs so that you get more for each $

When companies, consumers, the government, banks, and - hey - just about anyone who turns on the radio or TV these days is blowing a freaking gasket about the economy you need to be able to show that you are making effective use of your company's money.

Even if your company's cash position is solid, perception is reality and investors, managers and employers are taking this very grave moment in history as an opportunity for a little financial introspection. When the top brass turns its eye on your pet programs, you'd better show that they have value and that you are creatively exploring ways to get more for your money.

Today I will let sleeping dogs lie and side step the issue of how effective any of the specific programs mentioned above are likely to be outside the confines of a strategic, planned, well-measured and effective wellness program design. Let's just assume all of the programs are fantastic and each is amazingly effective at transforming the health of its participants {cough}.

But I do have to complain about the very minimum employers could do to ensure the effectiveness of wellness programs but often don't do: measure them. Data is one of those little things - those small, pesky continuous things that is not fun to collect, clean or analyze for most of us.

On the flip side, those who have meticulously gathered data around wellness have shown that well-rounded, multi-year, multicomponent wellness programs produce significant, positive return on investment (ROI). This is especially vital to businesses who shoulder the health care costs of employees - a cost that now makes up the lion's share of employer sponsored benefits.

The catch?

1. The average study length of effective, multi-component wellness programs is 3.6 years.
2. The average cost of effective, multi-component wellness programs is $150 (or more!) per employee per year.
3. The average participation in effective, multi-component wellness programs must be more than 40% in order to make a dent in health care costs.

If you are going to be allowed to manage a program that is responsible for that much in spending, for those many years, and touches half or more of your workforce, do you think anecdotal evidence is going to help this program survive the revolving door of HR Directors, C-Suite execs or directors at your company?
Take a minute to answer that.
No?
Oh really.

Measure measure measure.
Look at the data in excruciating detail. Get deep into it. Ask questions. Are you not a numbers person? Find someone who is. Hire someone who is. Make excel your Valentine. Ask all the questions that the CFO and shareholders will be asking you. Dissect the data 20 different ways until you feel satisfied that you understand. At a freaking minimum - measure program cost and participation and ask how and whether you can get more people to particpate for the same or less money.

When someone asks you how many people use your program and how much it costs per person, produce a cogent answer. If the number looks unimpressive present a convincing plan on how you will improve matters.

The easiest way to ensure you do this is to pick 6 key things to measure early on in your program. Define what you are measuring, how that measure relates to some of your company's strategic goals, where the data comes from and how often it needs to be collected, and some of the considerations and assumptions you are making when analyzing the data. Once you've pulled that together in a one page overview, simply filling in new data points should not be too difficult.

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

Corporate Gym Memberships (i.e. Paying Employees To Not Go To The Gym).

If you like paying for stuff your employees don't use - try a gym!

A 2005 study by two California researchers, titled "Paying Not to Go to the Gym," examined nearly 8,000 gym members' attendance over three years. You might be surprised to learn that 85% of users who bought a monthly contract were spending more money than if they paid on a per-use basis. That's because most members paid more than $70 per month but only visited the gym 4.8 times each month. They paid about $17 for each visit.

How effective were those 4+ visit per month at actually transforming members' health? It's anyone's guess, but chances are a 30 minute workout on the treadmill and a couple of half-hearted bicep curls are hardly enough to make a dent in the number of calories found in daily latte, scone or other weekday indulgence.

Fight!  This could get ugly:

The 300 Pound Gorilla:
Corporate Gym Membership

Weighing in at an average of $35-70 for each of your employees per month, this hometown favorite is sure to pummel employees with early cancellation fees when they realize that their 4 trips per month just aren't cutting the mustard.  And for you the employer?  Each attendee's 4 trips per month to make a trip to the sauna and catch up on sitcoms as they gingerly touch the pedals of a recumbent bike is never, never, ever going to make a dent in your health care or absenteeism costs.  I don't care what anyone else tells you.

 - VERSUS -

The Contender:
Your Company's Own Home Grown On-Site Program

Creating a simple on-site health and wellness program at your own company might not be the most sophisticated option, but is not a bad start.  It can often cost less than a catered dinner for one of your larger departments.  Use your network to find qualified presenters and set up a series of topics that are relevant to your workforce.  Pay the presenters and ask them not to sell to your employees (which will make people hate the classes).  If they are good, invite them back.  Get a team involved and have them help you promote the program through relentless word of mouth, emails, posters and anything else that will get people's attention - if only for a moment. 

Take the money that you would have spent on a corporate gym membership and offer it as an incentive for employees who attend a certain percentage of the seminars you hold, or, rotate incentives (i.e. anyone who comes to a seminar for the very first time qualifies for an incentive). 

True, this is not the most effective, expensive version of corporate wellness; however, it is a heck of a lot better than paying for something that no one uses.  Better yet, if they aren't using it you know it and can either:

1. find ways to promote better use, or,
2. drop the cost altogether and find a benefit with more universal appeal.

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

$700 billion?! Pffffttt! The bailout is for wimps!

Think the Wall Street credit crisis is bad for business? Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! I heard a commentary on NPR where an economist being interviewed referred to health care as a “train barreling down on the US Economy.” And while everyone is busy untying the maiden that is the finance industry from the tracks, our back is turned to the real threat chugging toward us with increasing speed.

At $700 billion the current financial bailout is roughly equivalent to 5% of the US GDP. That’s chump change compared to the more than 16% of GDP (yes, that’s over $2.2 trillion) the US spent on health care in 2007. Pop quiz: What’s 34% of 2.2 trillion? Trick answer: The portion of the health care bill that is paid by business. The costs of poor health are outpacing wages, inflation and GDP. By a lot. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Health care spending has risen about 2.4 percentage points faster than GDP since 1970.

The train shows no signs of slowing. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that by 2016 health care spending will be over $4.1 trillion, or, about 20% of GDP. Okay now do the math again! What’s 34% of $4.1 trillion? Answer: If you are planning to be in business in 9 years then we better get this credit crisis solved or you won’t be able to borrow enough money to pay for health care expenses!

Oh and by the way, this is all happening at a point where growth in corporate profits is on the decline and American productivity has reached an all time high – holding steady after impressive gains. In its annual report the International Labor Organization stated “The difference in [productivity] rankings can be explained by the fact that annual working hours per person employed are considerably higher in the United States than in the majority of European economies.” Unless business plans on lobbying for more hours in a day, their best bet for improving worker productivity will be investing in worker health.

In a study funded by the RAND Corporation, Soeren Mattke and his colleagues stated that “Annual US health-related productivity losses are estimated to reach some $260 billion, attributable not only to absenteeism but also to presenteeism (being present at work but working at a reduced capacity)”. Yes, you did the math correctly, that is $10 billion more than the current infusion of cash that the US treasury will be putting into American banks, but this number directly impacts business’ bottom line!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says chronic diseases are responsible for 75 percent of the $2 trillion spent on health care in 2005. Such diseases can be dramatically improved by things like: better diet, exercise and self-care. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that if you took all of the Americans who: do not smoke, maintain a healthy weight, consume five or more fruits and vegetables per day, and exercise the surgeon’s general’s recommended 30 minutes 5 days per week, you’d have a whopping 3% of the US population.

So what do employees’ health habits have to do with business?!? Quite a bit as it turns out. American workers spend close to 2,000 hours per year on the job. At the end of a long work day, a half an hour commute and a family waiting to be fed, how many people are realistically going to change and head back out to exercise for 30 minutes? Would you?

If we are going to stop this train then Americans need help with their health. Serious help. Currently the place where they spend the majority of their waking hours is not effectively reinforcing healthy behavior. When it comes to employee health you are competing against things like: physical exhaustion, donuts, prepared foods, comfortable couches, a pack of smokes, and beer! Your savviest competitor’s slickest product has nothing on beer!

If you are busy freaking out about the credit crisis and have relegated employee health to some dark little corner of your organization where the sad, unimaginative and ineffective solutions proposed to reverse the state of your workers' health fly in the face of reality, then good luck with that and we’ll see you in the bread line in 2016.