Be the Change. Corporate Wellness Made Easy

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1 Be the Change Corporate Wellness Made Easy Five Simple Steps to Dramatically Improving Employee Retention, Performance and Creating a Culture of Excellence in Your Business Ginny Grupp, MS, CPT Info@AlaskaFit.com

2 Dear Business Associate, Thank you for requesting this special report, On Being the Change, Wellness for Corporations or Community. Changing the direction of health and waistlines in America should be a top priority for corporations as well as communities. Let s face it, with all of the time you spend at the office, your corporation probably is your community. You ve heard the horrendous statistics 2 of 3 Americans is overweight with 1 of 3 being obese. The obesity epidemic is not about not being pretty. It s about the myriad healthcare costs that accompany the extra weight we are carrying around. According The Brookings Institute, relative medical costs for the obese are estimated to be 36 to 100 percent higher than for Americans of healthy weight. A 2009 study found that childhood obesity alone is responsible for $14.1 billion in direct medical costs annually. By some estimates, nearly 21 percent of all current medical spending in the United States is now obesity related. This report is not going to be a laundry list of statistics that point out just how bad the situation is. Rather, it is a series of action steps you can take to make changes in your corporation or in your community to inspire real change in your co-workers or your neighbors life (or perhaps in your own life and family). Thank you for taking the first step towards being the change you wish to see in the world. Cheers, Ginny Grupp Ginny Grupp

3 What is Wellness? Dictionary.com defines it as: 1. the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort. 2. an approach to healthcare that emphasizes preventing illness and prolonging life, as opposed to emphasizing treating diseases. This is just the starting point. Two things to note in these definitions are that both are action oriented. Wellness happens when we make deliberate effort and focus on preventing illness and prolonging life. This definition flies in the face of the philosophies of the American Health Care System. Our system is currently set up to fix the problem after it occurs. Health care is often delayed until a situation is so bad that the only solution is a costly medical procedure. Implementing wellness programs at the corporate or community level starts with a change in mindset. Great, you re thinking. How can I possibly change people s way of thinking? That s impossible. I have great news for you. You do not have to change anyone s mind. How does change happen? Again, from Dictionary.com, change is: The act or instance of making or becoming different. Note that change is an act. It requires action or movement. Change only happens when you create movement or put something (in this case, an idea) into motion. Once the motion is started, watch out! You never know where it will go. Your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to introduce the action steps to you corporation or community. This report will help you do just that.

4 Bring Wellness to Your Community or Corporation Start Here. Where do you start with your corporate/community wellness program? Believe it or not, it can be done in 5 steps. Below, I focus on corporate wellness programs first. Community programs will follow the same steps, with minor clarifications which will follow after the corporate plans. Step 1. Identify who in the company will be the go-to person for the program. For the corporation, this person must be in senior-level management. Ideally, it is the owner of the company or the company CEO. Keep in mind that this is NOT the person who will administer the program and track day-to-day operations. This person will be the face of the wellness program. This means that s/he will walk the talk, set the example and be the wellness program. The only way that corporate wellness programs are effective is if upper management is completely committed to the program. If the employees have any doubt as to how committed their boss is, they will ditch the wellness program to attend to work matters every time. Step 2. Identify behaviors that can and should be changed. There are two ways to do this. 1. In a corporate environment, this can be done through HR records of sick days or through a review of insurance claims and monies paid to the insurance company. 2. Conduct a survey of the employees asking what they want in a corporate wellness program. This survey would consist of a series of multiple choice and open-ended questions. A robust survey will help the employees feel involved and to a degree, in control, of the wellness program. If they have a say in what is developed, they are far more likely to participate in the program. Step 3. Address the issues brought up in the survey in a timely manner. Once the survey is developed and conducted, the wellness committee (this committee includes the owner/ceo, the administrator and a committee of employees interested in making the program work) should meet immediately and start working on the plan to implement change. Delays in reviewing, planning and getting back to the employees about the program will cause the program to lose momentum and fail. Quick response is essential to getting the program off the ground. Step 4. The committee then sets the standard for change. This can be done through multiple channels including: 1. Educational seminars or lunch & learn programs. 2. Making changes to the culture if necessary. 3. Creating internal challenges and rewards. These can range from incentives to eat 5-9 fruits and veggies, drink enough water, walk 10,000 steps each day, up to a full-

5 blown fitness/health challenge. Making healthy lifestyles fun is key to keeping the program alive. If employees feel like they are being forced to be healthy the program will dwindle and fail. If they employees are having fun, receiving great gifts and feeling motivated, the program will be a success. Step 5. Review progress. The committee should meet on a continual basis once the program is up and running. They should be able to return to the original survey or identified behaviors and be able to measure the change that has happened since implementation of the program. Ideally, this can be directly tied to a reduction in healthcare costs in the form of lower insurance premiums, reduced sick days, increased productivity of the workforce. You Community Program Communities would follow the same 5 steps. Step 1. The big difference would be who is leading the program. This community member must: 1. Be committed to making a change 2. Walk the talk and be the example to the community 3. Be consistent in their support of living a healthy lifestyle. Keep in mind that the community leader does not have the same power as the CEO in the corporation. Therefore, the 3 qualities outlined here are even more important in the community leader vs. the corporate CEO. Step 2. would be accomplished with a community-wide survey. The survey would need to be distributed via multiple media to be sure to reach everyone in the community and to get the greatest participation in the program. Step 3. This step may be even more important at the community level than it is at the corporate level. In a corporate setting, there is a captive audience of sorts. Employees are generally more compliant with their boss orders than community members are with fellow members of their community. Keeping the momentum alive in the community is only way for a community program to succeed. Once the momentum is lost, it will not be found again. Step 4. This step is also trickier outside of a corporate setting. Laws are not passed to encourage good behavior as easily as corporate directives are handed down. For the community, the committee members will be the heroes of the program. They need to be visible and they need to exemplify the change that the community can expect to see from the program.

6 Step 5. Assessment is also less well-defined at the community level. Return to Step 2, review the behaviors that were identified as needs change. Determine ways to measure progress towards the goals set out at program launch. Still not sure where to begin? I can help. AlaskaFit can work with you and your company to develop your corporate wellness program. For additional information on our corporate programs, please contact Ginny at