Corporate wellness programs show strength in downturn
Glen E.Ellman
“It lowered my cholesterol,” he said.
Randall, with a history of heart disease in his family, had discussed the issue Chase’s wellness department and, working with a dietician, made changes to his diet.
“I can directly relate it to my work with the dietician and that was the result of the company’s corporate wellness offering,” he said.
Those kinds of stories, as well as other research, is why companies continue to support corporate wellness programs even through the current economic downturn and continuing increases in health care premiums.
But it’s not just the employees seeing the results of such programs.
“Employers see a benefit,” said LuAnn Heinen, a vice president with the National Business Group in Health, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that helps large companies deal with health care issues. “It’s hard to get clinical trial data on the subject [of corporate wellness programs] but we have data that is really suggestive that looks at premium trends year over year and when you look at the best performers, the leaders are the ones that have implemented things like corporate wellness programs.”
Heinen also noted that many of these corporate wellness programs are not just aimed at older employees.
“You now have people in their 30s who are very susceptible to Type II diabetes and obesity,” she said. “Several years ago that wasn’t the case, so it’s not just something for one segment of the employee population, it’s for everyone.”
Carol Cone, human resources manager for Chase Bank in Tarrant County, said the benefits to the employee from such programs translate to the company.
“Whatever we can do to help our employees stay well and fit physically and emotionally result in improved attendance and improved productivity and that aligns very much with our business objectives,” she said.
Jimmy Mak, senior vice president of Larry North Fitness and manager of the Fort Worth and Southlake clubs, says he sees the benefits to employees from such programs first hand nearly every day.
“I hear it all time from someone who starts on the program,” Mak said. “The effects are cumulative. After a few weeks they come up and say, ‘I feel great.’
“For a lot of our members, no matter what kind of exercise program they do, I think the biggest level is not the visual results – that may come in time – but how much better they feel. They tend to sleep better at night, are more productive and make conscious food decisions that keep them consistent in the program.”
Larry North Fitness originally opened its downtown Fort Worth location 11 years ago to offer a corporate fitness program for Carter-Burgess (now Jacob Engineering) employees. It serves several downtown businesses as part of its corporate wellness program. It’s not all large firms like Jacobs Engineering that take part, Mak says.
“We have some firms with just 100 employees and, for example, a law firm with fewer than that, but they all see a benefit to it,” he said.
Greg Blaies, founding partner at Blaies & Hightower LLP, is a big believer in fitness as part of a corporate wellness program.
“One of our partners, Wes Hightower, was an athlete at Texas Tech, so he’s very self-motivated, but I had been dormant for 10 years or so,” he said. “When we moved into the then-Carter Burgess building several of us joined the gym. Since then we’ve joined their corporate program so our employees received discounted rates on membership.”
Like most programs that work as part of a corporate wellness program, Larry North Fitness can track how often an employee visits the gym.
“We customize it to fit the customer, but if a company is paying 100 percent of an employee’s membership, they probably want some idea of the return on that investment,” Mak said.
That is true of other area gyms that offer corporate wellness programs, said Hope Caldwell, director of marketing for the YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth. But there are other options for companies that don’t offer corporate wellness programs, she said.
“We also provide ‘Lunch and Learns’, on-site group exercise classes and question and answer session for those companies that don't have a formal employee wellness program in place,” she said.
Because many companies have had layoffs due to the economy, the YMCA has instituted a plan for pink-slipped employees.
“Overall, our corporate membership revenue has remained stable,” Caldwell said. “Of course, when a company experiences downsizing or employee layoffs, we will see those effects. We have put into place a short-term scholarship option for our current members who have lost their jobs or been laid off. They automatically receive 50 percent off their membership fees while they search for new employment or to give them time to complete a more formal scholarship application to qualify them for one year of assistance.”
Corporate wellness programs are about more than just getting ripped at the gym, however.
Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth has several offerings designed for corporate wellness programs, according to Clint Sanders, business relationship specialist for employer outreach programs.
Along with an executive health program, Texas Health also offers a mobile unit that offers various health screening programs, an occupational health services program and a recently-added vascular health program.
“For a lot of the programs, we provide the tools – smoking secession programs, health screenings and such – and the companies provide their own campaigns to reach the employees,” he said. “We can help them tailor these programs to best suit their employees.”
Alcon Laboratories Inc. in Fort Worth has topped the list of “best companies to work for” in Fortune magazine for the last 11 years, but the company continues to look for ways to improve its health care offerings.
Last year Alcon began working with The Vitality Group of Chicago as a way to “incentivize our employees to lead healthier lifestyles,” according to a company spokesman.
Vitality is an incentive-based wellness program that begins with an assessment to identify risk factors and provide members with a personalized set of activities and goals to help them improve their health. Members are then given incentives for their participation throughout the program and earn rewards based on their participation and measured improvements.
Depending on how the program is set up, employees can, for instance, receive an Apple iPod for successfully reducing weight, said Arthur Carlos, CEO of Vitality.
“We have a robust behavioral change system that helps companies impede risk factors for their employees,” he said. “We’ve been doing this globally for 10 years and brought the company to the U.S. in April of 2008.”
While employers continue to implement corporate wellness programs, Larry North, founder of Larry North Fitness, said he believes companies have to be more involved in their employees’ overall health.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years and people don’t want to read a book, they say, ‘Tell me what I need to do,’” he said. “It’s total interaction, you’ve got to be involved or it’s not going to work.”
