EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY
A New Approach to Wellness:
Keep the
Healthy People Healthy
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By Debra Wein
President and Founder
Wellness Workdays
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Ask about employee wellness programs and you’ll likely hear Weight Watchers, a
Biggest Loser-type program and/or smoking cessation. While these programs can be motivating and fun, we must acknowledge that they exclude the largest portion of your population–the healthy group!
Statistically, 65 percent of a typical employee population has 0-2 health risks (e.g. depression, stress, high glucose, overweight, smoking, blood pressure or lack of physical activity, etc.), 25 percent have 2-4 risks and 15 percent have more than 5 risks.1
Because 20 percent of the high risk population is responsible for more than 80 percent of an employer's healthcare costs2, it seems to make sense to focus solely on this population to drive costs down. However, it’s equally important to keep healthy employees healthy.
More than 80 million baby boomers will turn 50-60 years of age this decade. Research tells us that, if ignored, our health deteriorates as we age, including decreased muscle mass, bone mass and metabolism, and increased weight and blood pressure. Statistically, 87.5 percent of health care claim costs are due to individual lifestyle3. As such, organizations need to reach out to these individuals before they end up in the high risk category. In fact, a cost savings of $350/person/year is realized by organizations for each employee who, though perhaps not improving his/her health, does not add any new risk factors during that year!1 Costly conditions like diabetes, heart disease and obesity can be prevented by engaging in healthy behaviors on a daily basis. If you can get people exercising, eating well and dealing with stress appropriately, you can mitigate the ill effects of aging.
How do organizations develop programs that keep healthy employees healthy and help unhealthy employees become healthy?
Design a mix of programs that engage different segments of your employee population. For example, a team wellness challenge could reward non-smokers while providing incentives and rewards for those striving to quit. Similarly, designing a wellness challenge that rewards those already at a healthy weight as well as those losing weight is a win: win for everyone. Helping employees get and stay within a healthy weight range by adopting healthy habits including portion control and regular physical activity, addresses the weight loss and weight maintenance groups. Such programs meet individuals where they are and are more likely to engage and connect with more participants.
Encouraging physical activity through ‘take the stairs’ campaigns, workplace walking routes (indoors and outdoors, if space allows), and pedometer/accelerometer-based walking programs have all been successful in increasing physical activity in various populations. The research also documents a financial gain. Programs that motivate individuals to increase physical activity save organizations approximately $900/person/year in direct medical costs2 and can reduce medication use, hospitalizations and unnecessary physician visits.1
Already have a walking challenge but want to bring it out of the dark ages? Go high tech! Many employees embrace technology, and this can be used to motivate people to increase their physical activity and/or track their food intake throughout the day. Applications for iPhones including Map My Run or Walk n’ Play tally a users’ daily movement—such as walking and climbing stairs—and translates it to calories burned through a biomedical calibration process applied on the iPhone’s accelerometer. (Of course, you have to carry your iPhone for the app to work.)
Hand in hand with tracking physical activity is calorie counting. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume; to maintain, you need to burn the same number of calories you consume. There are several online sources for calorie counting, including CalorieKing (fee-based) and SparkPeople (free), or iPhone’s LoseIt app (free) and blackberry’s FatSecret app (for purchase). Ideally, though, you could offer your employees calorie tracking and perhaps even access to a coach to monitor their calories consumed and calories burned.
At Wellness Workdays, we use a Personalized Employee Dashboard (PED) to do this, and seeing great results (see screenshot below). Participants wear an accelerometer--a device similar to a pedometer but instead of simply tracking steps, it measures calories burned by sensing motion in six different planes—while walking, hiking, biking and strength-training, etc. The device captures these movements and translates them to calories burned. The data is uploaded to the PED and employees can view graphs of their activity levels throughout the day/week/month.
Figure 1: Employee Dashboard Main Page
The PED also offers the option to track individual food consumption via an extensive database of food options. Your employee can see how many calories she burned and, if she tracked her food intake, how many calories she consumed. The PED can also be equipped with a workstation where employees can monitor their weight and body fat (body mass index or BMI). A 1996 study showed that individuals with a high BMI cost an average of $2,326 more in annual health claims compared to healthy BMI individuals4. And the dashboard makes it simple for employees to keep track of all of the necessary components of weight management. In fact, an employee at one of our client locations lost 75 pounds just following the guidelines set up for him on the dashboard!
Whether you are just starting a wellness program or modifying an existing one, make sure you have programming that appeals to a wide employee population. This may mean running multiple programs throughout the year, using different approaches. When you address the health goals of all of your employees, not just the high risk ones, your employees—many more of them—will thank you!
About the author:
Debra Wein, MS, RD, LDN, CSSD, CWPD, is a nationally recognized expert on health and wellness and has designed award winning programs for both individuals and corporations around the world. She is president and founder of Wellness Workdays, (www.wellnessworkdays.com) a leading provider of corporate wellness programs. Debra has nearly 20 years of experience working in the health and wellness industry with the goal of bringing the latest developments in nutrition, fitness and wellness to her clients to help improve their lives. Join the Wellness Workdays conversation on Facebook.
Selected sources
1. Edington, D. Zero Trends: Health as a Serious Economic Strategy. Health management Research Center, (Ann Arbor), p. 40. 2009.
2. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved July 18, 2011 from http://www.ahrq.gov/research/ria19/expriach1.htm.
3. Schroeder S.A. Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne (IPFW) Study. NE Journal of Medicine. 2006
4. Long DA, Reed R, Lehman G. The cost of lifestyle health risks: obesity. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 48(3):244-251. 2006.
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