Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

The current healthcare model in this country is scary.

It’s scary from a cost standpoint, to be sure. We spend more than $2 trillion annually on healthcare, and according to the American Medical Association, 75 percent of U.S. medical care dollars are spent on preventable illnesses like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. U.S. healthcare can be scary from a user standpoint, too.

A Frightening ER Adventure

I recently had an experience with strep throat while I was out of town. Unfortunately, my best Jedi mind tricks couldn’t beat his bug, so one raging fever and a wicked sore throat later, I found myself at the hotel lobby at 11:30 p.m. asking for help finding an emergency room.

The ER waiting room was an adventure in itself. After having to weave through a maze of men who appeared to be “sleeping it off,” I noticed that the waiting room smelled like urine. One of the would-be patients was vomiting in the most gut-wrenching way possible every two or three minutes. And there was this weird guy sitting in front of me who wasn’t wearing a shirt, had a gaping wound on his forehead, and (of  course) he felt it was acceptable to take off his shoes and socks to lay down on the lounge chair.  In a creepy (but I think well-meaning paternal) way, he repeately asked me, “Honey, are you OK?”

There’s nothing like a scary ER waiting room in a strange town to make you think twice about just how sick you really are!

Can Worksite Wellness Be the Place to Start?

Forgive me this sweeping generalization, but I think promoting better health really is the answer to this country’s scary sick-care model. If we can keep more people well, it will take some of the burden off of our overworked system (and hopefully help keep our emergency rooms from looking like something out of a horror film).

Worksites really do have a captive audience to target for worksite health promotion. Unfortunately, it seems that building a healthier workforce is getting scary, too. There are legal landmines to navigate, value-based benefits design to decode, communication strategies to build, and leadership to get on board. And if that isn’t a scary enough to-do list, many worksites are embarking on these healthier strategies with an army of one (or sometimes half of one) person.

“It’s scary” isn’t a reason to not get to work incentivizing better health in your workforce (it’s never wrong to do the right thing), but it certainly has stalled the best-laid plans.

What is your worksite doing to bravely improve employee health?

With money being tight in just about every organization these days, companies are looking to cut costs any way they can. At first glance, adding corporate health and wellness programs doesn’t seem like a very cost-effective move, especially if you're looking at building a corporate fitness center complete with an onsite fitness center. Upon closer examination, though, it’s clear that the benefits of worksite health promotion programs far outweigh the initial start-up costs of implementing them.

A recent study at the University of Michigan showed just how much a company can save over the long term by focusing on worksite wellness. The corporate wellness program of a large utility company was studied over a period of 9 years. The cost over that time period was rather large at $7.3 million, but it was found that the same “expensive” program saved the company $12.1 million over the long haul, for an overall savings of $4.8 million.

This study is believed to have found the true cost of implementing worksite health promotion programs because both the direct and indirect costs were measured. It may be a tough decision for the leaders of an organization to make because of the initial and ongoing costs of offering corporate wellness programs, such as staffing corporate fitness centers, but there seems to be a high return on the investment.

We all know the benefits of regular exercise and seeking to live a healthier life. Those who strive to live in this manner are a welcome relief to many employers. For those who need a little extra motivation, though (or even for those who don’t but like the convenience of onsite wellness opportunities), investigating how your company might be able to move forward with a corporate wellness program is a win-win situation.

Your employees are your most valuable asset. What are you doing to help invest in and protect them and thus protect your company's bottom line?

The other day one of my wellness center members approached me about my advice regarding vitamins and supplements. She had been feeling extremely tired and fatigued while at work and wanted to know if there was something she could be taking to combat her exhaustion. I was happy to see that she was increasing her activity in hopes of boosting her energy, but she said she was still feeling tired even after a 15-minute walk on the treadmill.

Supplements Can Fill In Your Employee's Nutritional Gaps

Vitamin and mineral supplements are a great backup plan for when our diets may be lacking in all the recommended fruits and vegetables we need. If you’re like me, this is pretty frequent. Although they are not necessary, it is nice to be able to fill in the nutritional gaps in our day-to-day diet choices with a supplement. This is especially true if you are on a diet that eliminates an entire food group or you are a vegetarian.

Encourage Employees to Speak to a Professional When Taking Supplements

It is best to speak to your doctor or a registered dietician when considering supplements so he or she can tell you which supplements are best. Additionally, if you are already taking a daily supplement, you should notify you doctor or pharmacist because some can interfere with your medications.

Supplements Aren't Always the Answer

Sometimes exhaustion can be caused by something as simple as eating too few calories or too much sugar. After a few questions with my member, we discovered that she was drinking almost no water (or any other liquid, for that matter). I encouraged her to keep a regular sleep/wake cycle, to continue exercising and I recommended that she increase her water intake.

Follow up with this member found her feeling much better! I was thrilled. She said her exercise routine is getting easier and she has drastically increased her H₂0.

A Health Professional Could Benefit Your Company

Many people suffer from fatique and exhaustion. Your company could benefit from offering employees the resources of a degreed exercise specialist or registered dietician as part of its employee health benefits. An exercise professional can assess your employees needs and, if necessary, refer them to a registered dietician who can not only assess one’s diet and make recommendations for improvement, he or she can suggest appropriate supplements if necessary.

Although each day may technically be a new day, today brings the stresses of yesterday and the preparations of tomorrow. Nowadays a 40-hour work week is hard to come by, and going home without work is even harder to swing. With all of this added work comes added stress.

Untreated Employee Stress Is Bad for Business

Stress that is not dealt with properly can lead to negative outcomes. The outcome you will be least excited about is loss of productivity. Along with loss of productivity comes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, headaches, upset stomach, and chest pain, and it can even worsen certain ailments employees already have.

According to an annual Harris Interactive Attitudes in the American Workplace survey, 83% of Americans reported they are at least a little stressed at work, and nearly half said they need help in learning how to manage stress.

Consider the following tips to keep your stress at bay.

Develop a Wellness and Fitness Program or add Stress Management to Your Offerings

If your company doesn't offer a worksite wellness program, get busy creating one! Worksite wellness programs offer great resources for employees to better their health, including stress management. A healthy and stress-free employee equals more productivity for the company, so it's a win for both! (See the Wellness Council of America's site for tips.)

Encourage Employees To Use Deep Breathing Techniques

Deep breathing counteracts the increased heart rate and blood pressure that happen when the body is under stress. It is one of the best ways to stay calm when the body wants to do the opposite, and it can be done anywhere. When you breathe deeply, you are sending a message to your brain and body to relax. Next time your employees feel stressed on the job, have them try these steps:

1. Sit up straight and exhale completely through your mouth.  
2. Place your hands on your stomach and slowly inhale through your mouth, pushing your hands out with your stomach.
3. Hold the inhale for two to five seconds and slowly exhale.
4. Repeat until you feel relaxed.

Encourage Exercise As A Lifestyle, Including at Work!

We've all heard about how exercise can help you maintain heart health and manage a healthy weight, but exercise can also be a great form of stress relief. Physical activity not only boosts the release of those feel-good endorphins (and in turn boosting your mood); it can also improve sleep that can so often be disrupted by stress.

If you or your employees aren't currently exercising, start slow. Choose an activity that you enjoy and maybe even consider including your friends. Making it a social activity can give you a stress-relieving social network and make you more likely to stick with the program.

The Results Are Worth the Effort

Learning to manage stress in healthy ways will keep your employees producing the work your want to see as well as keep them sane during the process. You are only as good as your body allows, and it needs to be healthy in order to perform at the top. Make every day a new day by dealing with the stresses of yesterday and breathing through the thoughts of tomorrow.  

Kickin’ Cardio…Butts and Guts…Get on the Ball…fun names, right? These energetic exercise class offerings belong to the realm of corporate wellness and offer unique aspects of fitness that keep a loyal crowd coming back week after week.

In my years of working in a corporate fitness center, I’ve identified three reasons why group exercise continues to be successful in enticing new employees to join the worksite fitness center as well as increasing participation from current members:

1. Adding a Corporate Group Fitness Class Allows for Social Interaction and Accountability

The phrase “buddy system” is used in so many settings because it works! Find any article about weight loss or exercise and it will cite accountability as a key motivational strategy. Telling a friend about a fitness goal—or in this case, meeting a friend at a group exercise class—makes one more likely to follow through. Breaking a sweat next to a friend ties in the social aspect that makes those squats more enjoyable…or at least tolerable.

As a group exercise instructor, I’ve often had to remind my class participants, “If you are able to carry on a conversation with your neighbor right now, you are not working hard enough!” They are having that much fun together!

2. Placing a Fitness Class into Your Calendar Makes It More Likely to Happen

When that friendly Outlook reminder pops up on your computer screen that says, “Kickboxing Class, due in 15 minutes,” it’s hard to ignore. We all know the typical pattern: For those who aren’t “morning people,” exercising before work is out of the question. During the day it’s easy to get wrapped up in deadlines, phone calls, and the like that push daytime exercise off the agenda. So, there you are at 5 p.m., mentally drained. So you think, "I’ll go home and just eat a snack or take a quick nap and then I’ll work out." Yeah, right.

Having a specific class that meets only at a certain time makes the idea of exercise more concrete because it can’t be pushed later and later into the day. Another bonus of adding a group exercise class onto your Outlook calendar is that if coworkers notice you are blocked for that particular time frame, they may try to schedule meetings around it.

3. Going to a Corporate Exercise Class Puts You on Mental Autopilot,  Saving You Stress

I quickly discovered that in corporate fitness centers, clients deal with high stress levels, never-ending meetings, and work piles waiting at their desks when they return from the gym. In other words, exercise is the escape.

The last thing a frenzied, number-crunching employee wants to do in the gym is spend time planning a workout. Leave it to the group fitness instructor to organize the muscle groups, time the circuits, and count the repetitions. Knowing that all you have to do is show up to a class, dressed in your workout gear, makes exercise seem like less of a second job and more of what it’s designed to be: stress relief, a physical challenge, and a recharge of the batteries.

Employees are already offered such an array of professional workshops and classes. Consider adding group exercise into the mix to liven up your worksite wellness initiative.

Most employers have blocked social networking sites like Facebook on their company computers while simultaneously establishing robust social media policies. It’s not surprising; the reasons to block social media content from company computers are many.

Social Media and Workplace Wellness

The truth is, your workforce is still out there playing FarmVille, tweeting on Twitter, and sharing YouTube content. Maybe it’s time to get social with your employee wellness program, by not only allowing social media use but also by creating a social media presence for your wellness program.

Top Three Reasons to Revisit Social Media Policies

1. Your employees are already out there. According to Cisco’s 2010 Midyear Security Report, an alarming 50 percent of surveyed employees admitted to surfing the web socially even though they knew it was against company policy. In addition, 27 percent of respondents took matters into their own hands by reconfiguring the settings on company computers to allow access to previously blocked content.
2. Research tells us social networks matter. The Framingham Heart Study is one of the most well-known, comprehensive health studies in the industry. It followed, among other things, the impact of social networks on tobacco use and obesity trends from 1971 to 2003. It turns out that social networks have a very powerful influence on whether and how individuals will change health behavior.
3. Quiet leaders might surface through social media. We’re always talking about the importance of employee champions for your wellness program. It’s common for those individuals to take the superhero form of the already-in-shape and always-eats-right marathon runner who wants to encourage her coworkers to be like her. Social media allows the quiet champions—the unassuming former smoker, or the less obvious heart-attack-waiting-to-happen who made small changes over time to improve his health—a platform to speak out, encourage, and quietly motivate their colleagues to take baby steps toward improving health.

Consider How The Good Side of Social Media Can Work for Your Corporate Wellness Initiatives

Using social media to promote your employee wellness program is hard for most executives to buy into because of the productivity concerns. However, this free communication and sharing opportunity might provide more benefit than you expect. Your employees are already out there socializing. Why not meet them where they are with the messages you want them to hear?

Corporate fitness folks hear it all the time: "I really want to work out on my lunch hour, but I don’t want to sweat at work." It's a legitimate excuse. Some of us sweat in ways that it takes hours to recover from. And who wants to smell sweaty for the rest of the day?

Yoga – A Perfect Fitness Fit for Employee Health

That being said, avoiding exercise altogether will only result in overweight employees. Instead, think of yoga as the answer. We don’t mean that in an all-the-world's-mysteries-can-be-solved-while-you-meditate kind of way. But the truth is that yoga can challenge your muscles enough that employees will walk away from class feeling both relaxed and rejuvenated while barely breaking a sweat.

Employees Can Benefit from Yoga as Exercise

There is still debate on exactly how effective yoga can be for true, sustained weight loss. But yoga can positively impact flexibility and muscle tone as well as body image. Each of those pieces has a role in an individual's ability to maintain or lose weight.

How to Bring Yoga to Your Workplace

A great way to control healthcare costs is to start a yoga class at work. If you can’t afford to hire an instructor for a formal yoga class at your worksite fitness center or a vacant meeting room, try renting some DVDs from the library and borrowing a TV/DVD player combo from your AV room. Employees can also incorporate yoga into their day by using some yoga relaxation moves at their desks.

It’s rare for me to have a conversation with a prospective NIFS client these days without being asked something related to the return on investment (ROI) for worksite wellness. I can’t blame them; these folks are typically tasked with decreasing an organization’s healthcare costs. An organization can take one of several approaches to decreasing healthcare costs, such as decreasing the size of the workforce. But cutting staff offers diminishing returns. Wellness, as general as that term is, can be the solution.

Here’s the thing: ROI for wellness programs can be extremely tricky to capture. Not only do you need to build your program with the right pillars in place, but the evaluation can be hard to wade through and costly to calculate. Read what Dr. Ron Goetzel, an industry pioneer in measuring wellness ROI, has to say about this in his WELCOA interview.

What’s a company to do? Wellness is complicated and requires persistence over time to see the results you’re looking for. If you can’t get everything in your wellness program “just right” and you don’t have the means for full-blown evaluation, should you give up and not offer a wellness program for your workforce at all?

It’s at this crossroads that you’ll need to consider the true motives behind the wellness initiative. I suspect your goals have to do with more than just direct healthcare costs. I’d be willing to bet two things:

• The organization is interested in doing right by its employees.
• You recognize a responsibility to contribute positively to your employees' overall wellbeing and that happier employees are more loyal and productive employees.

The first part—doing right by your employees—is actually even harder to measure than health outcomes and changes in corporate healthcare costs. But if you watch your employees' faces and listen to the water-cooler conversations, the anecdotal evidence you capture will say it all: Treat your employees right—with programs and services that make the healthy choice the easy choice—and they’ll work harder for you.

"Build a health culture at work and your wellness programs will succeed," worksite health promotion professionals have said a thousand times. Seriously though, what does that mean? What does a health culture at work look like? How do you know when you’ve arrived?

Employees Gain Physical Health Benefits While Gardening

Maybe we reach our destination when we learn to infuse a little healthy fun and flexibility into the workday. Consider this: A team of employees at the McPherson CertainTeed Molded Products plant in Kansas created and implemented their own employee health initiative. Working with McPherson County agents, the employees found a piece of land on which to plant a vegetable garden. They tilled the soil and planted the seeds. Today, the garden is maintained by an enthusiastic crew of employees. Those who work the garden also reap additional health benefits from the physical activity required to plant and maintain the garden.

Employees Gain Additional Health Benefits While Gardening

Employees also reap the benefits of healthy, pesticide-free veggies for daytime snacks and at-home cooking. 

Exercising, eating right, having fun, reducing stress…sounds like a health culture to me!

How Can You Build A Health Culture at Work?

Share what your company is doing to build a healthier culture by commenting below. Even better, let others know how are you empowering your associates to take the lead in constructing a shared and mutually beneficial healthy workplace culture.