For starters…
• 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies have
some kind of wellness program
• Wellness is the new “environmental
movement” of the workplace
Which way do I go?
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Aerobic dancing
Tai Chi
Gourmet diet
Ergonomics
Chiropractic
Massage
Stress management
Free bicycles
Blood pressure checks
Clinical nutrition
Smoking cessation
Team sports
Five a day fruit
Mandatory pedometers
Zen yoga
• Look at characteristics that shaped successful
programs
• Stephen Covey
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People paradigm
applied to workplace wellness
The
HABITS
of
HIGHLY
EFFECTIVE
WELLNESS
PROGRAMS
POWERFUL LESSONS IN CORPORATE HEALTH
Feeding the Golden Goose
Production/capacity
Production
Healthy People=Healthy Profits
• “The PC principle is to always treat your
employees the way you would want them to
treat your best customers.”
– Stephen Covey
• Workplace wellness:
– Bribery?
– Investment?
• “PC work is treating employees as volunteers
just as you treat customers as volunteers,
because that’s what they are—they volunteer
the best part—their hearts and minds.”
– Stephen Covey
Google
– Able to keep creating, inventing,
finding solutions, breaking boundaries,
and realizing new technologies they
never imagined possible
– Employee education, PD, employee
health
– free bicycles
– Healthy gourmet meals
– Onsite massage
– Most sought after companies
– 1,300 applicants per day
– Lowest staff turnover in IT
– 5%
• “If we don’t continually invest in improving or
PC we severely limit our options.”
– Stephen Covey
Habit 1: Begin with the End in Mind
• A company should have
a clear vision of it wants
to achieve or where it
wants to go with its
program
• What is wellness?
• How does it fit into the
larger mission?
• The wellness approach
• Holistic approach
• Optimising health by
accounting for these factors
Physical
• The wellness and business
• Tremendous potential for
change
• Some wellness advocates
suggest that this should be
incorporated into a
companies mission
statement
Wellness
Chemical
Emotional
NASA
• Mission statement:
– “to explore space and search
for life”
• Recognized the importance
of optimal physical and
mental fitness for astronauts
• Applied the same principles
to all employees, engineers
and janitors alike
NASA
– Has specifically stated
mission with regard to
employee health
– “…to ensure that every
NASA employee will on
leaving or retiring from
the agency, be healthier
than the average
American worker as a
result of his or her
experience with NASA…”
• Authenticity
– If a wellness program is
part of a larger mission
statement it is easier to
implement and support
– Without mission statement
or clear vision:
• Just another politically
correct exercise in
pamphleteering and
mandatory lectures
• HR burden that consumes
resources
– Hassles employees
– Stresses employers
– Paradigm shift
Habit 2: Be Proactive
Proactive
•
•
•
•
Leadership
Initiative
Character-based
Genuine
Reactive
• Directed by external
factors, (QHSE
regulations,
competition)
• Employee demands
• Problems such as
absenteeism
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Metro Police
• Metro Police:
– Stress reduction
First Scotrail
Implemented wellness
program in 2006 targeting
low back pain and other
lifestyle factors
• Interventions:
– Onsite back care
lessons
– Hands-on treatment
– Gym memberships
– 1:1 lifestyle counselling
• Overall saving ₤3 million
per year
• Wellness program won an
honorable mention
US Department of Defense
• Low back pain also a
priority
• Chiropractors in US
bases in 2004
• Reduced absenteeism
by over 300,000 lost
duty days—or 30 %
• Program has since been
expanded
Habit 4: Seek First to Understand, and
then Be Understood
The Employees Side
• Listening actively
• Bottom-up approach,
rather than top down
• Surveys, etc.
Digital Outlook
• Surveyed employees for health
priorities
• Flexible working hours
• Health and wellness scores
improved 11 %
• Sickness absence rates fell 95%
• Staff turnover reduced from
34% in 2007 to 9% in 2008
Management’s Side
• Executives who
question the approach:
– More external pressure
– New government
regulations or
requirements
– More pressure from
employees or unions
– Wellness data…
Management’s Side
• 180 million lost
working days per
year
• Cost: £575 per
employees
• £32 billion
• Presenteeism
costs an
additional 2-7x
that figure
chronic illness/injury
11%
low back pain
36%
Stress
53%
Management’s Side
• Recognize there is a
problem
• Absenteeism
• Injury
• Low morale
• Recognize the need for
assessment
Parcel Force
•
•
In 2002 had record profits but high
absenteesim, accident rate and low
employee satisfaction
Deligated wellness strategies to local
managers
– Health risk assessments, MSD
treatment, stress counselling
– Wellbeing promotion: gyms, bicycle
loans, sports grants
– 24/7 health and wellbeing contact
centre
– Sickness and absence reduced 1/3,
saving £55 million
– Accidents reduced 45%, saving
£440,00
– Customer service improved by 50%
Habit 5: Think Win-win
• Wellness should be focussed on results, not
method
• Essence of win-win strategy
• Focussed what is to be done, not how
• Allows for flexibility
• Respect between parties involved
• Employees can only volunteer their loyalty
• Example from Glasgow
– Reactive programming is win-lose as well as lose-lose
Potential Problems
• Wellness as the elephant in the room
• Politically-correct time waster
• Infringement on people’s privacy
• Infringement on personal choice
– Rather than alleviating stressors, you’re creating them
Potential Problems
• Wellness borders on
some very personal
issues:
• wt. loss
• smoking
• Respect for employees
is fundamental
Respect for Decision Makers
• Management is taking
risk
• Need to see returns
• Wellness programs
should have a healthy
ROI
Respect for Decision Makers
• Which Wellness
programs have greatest
impact?
• Absenteeism
• ROI
• Pricewaterhouse Cooper
report
Respect for Decision Makers
• Price Waterhouse
Cooper report
• Wellness programs
reduced absenteeism on
average 40 percent
• Not all wellness programs
were equal
Return On Investment of three types of Health Intervention in
the Workplace in the UK,(Source: Price Waterhouse Coope,
2008)
40
34
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
5.8
1
0
Health Awareness
Ergonomic
Intervention
Manual Therapy
Return On Investment at Three US Onsite Intervention Programs
for Musculoskeletal Disorders, (Source: Price Waterhouse
Cooper 2008)
Respect for Decision Makers
• Three criteria for successful program:
• Musculoskeletal intervention
• Onsite education program
• Onsite intervention or counselling
• Initiated “Back Care”
workshops program
in 2005 to reduce
absenteeism
attributed to back
pain:
– Back care instruction
– Onsite manual therapy
intervention
– Back-related absence
reduced 43 %
– Return on investment was
1:31, or ₤1660 for every
participating employee
Habit 6: Synergize
• Synergy is what
happens when we use
all of the habits we’ve
described here
– When the combined
results are more than
the input
– 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, it
equals 3 or 5 or 500
• It’s what happens when
we stop comparing,
criticizing and
controlling and just
appreciate differences
• It’s what is behind the
most the successful
wellness programs
• YouTube - British Heart
Foundation and BANES Health at Work
• Synergy is also where
companies come up
with new ideas
• From Google’s massage
therapy to the DoD and
chiropractic
• Theses innovations are
outside of the box of
expected wellness
programs
– More effective
– Higher ROIs
• Standard objection to
wellness programs:
• Why give programs at
work when they are
pretty much available
everywhere
– Smoking
– This is a huge
opportunity for
wellness programs to
give people what they
are not getting
elsewhere
• Huge interest in natural
health approaches
• Groundswell against
more traditional
approaches
• Wt. Loss
• Tried all the remedies
• Missing most recent
data—cutting high
fructose corn syrup and
sugar more important
than cutting fat
• North Sea Health:
• Looking at ways of
delivering up-to-date
information on topics
such as clinical nutrition
to the workplace
• Looking at way of
delivering chiropractic in
the workplace
• Looking at ways of
providing people with
effective, evidence-based
options
• Report for the Medical
Research Council in
2008 estimated that the
time it takes for new
research findings to be
adopted by standard
clinical procedures for
cardiovascular disease
alone in 9-25 years
– Average gap of 17 years
• This gap is probably
wider in the nonpharmaceutical arena:
– Vitamin D
• Medical breakthrough
• Thousands of papers for
use against
–
–
–
–
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Cancer
Inflammatory diseases
Back pain
Cold and flu prevention
To name a few
• It will likely be years
before this is
incorporated into
mainstream medicine
• This is huge opportunity
for wellness initiatives
• Wellness programs could
provide basic health
education as well as
helping to inform people
about alternatives
• Workplace wellness
could be a way to think
outside the box:
• Thinking beyond standard
wellness approaches
• To bring cutting-edge,
evidence based education
and treatment to the
workplace
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
• This really just about
the importance of
renewing the other
habits
• Need to have in place
tools to assess and
improve your program
• The need to constantly
refer back to a vision or
mission statement as a
reference
Review
• 1.Begin with the end in
mind
• 2. Be proactive
• 3. Put first things first
• 4. First seek to
understand
• 5. Think win-win
• 6. Synergize
• 7. Sharpen the saw
• Thank you
• Questions
• www.northseahealth.com
• www.mercola.com