Does your company have any kind of wellness plan? If so, does your plan focus on more than walking and/or losing weight? Does it matter?
Statistics vary, but what is certain is that Corporate Wellness companies have become big business. According to a 2013 RAND Corporation article cited in a 2016 Chicago Tribune article: “A study from the RAND Corp. estimated that corporations spent $6 billion on wellness in 2013. Industry experts said that figure now could exceed $8 billion.”
These corporate programs, funded in part by the future-up-for-grabs Affordable Care Act, allowed companies opportunities to help with exercise, smoking cessation, diabetes prevention, etc.
Certainly these are noble pursuits – according to the CDC in 2015, absenteeism from illness and injury cost US Companies $225.8 billion dollars annually… wait, let’s not abbreviate that…
$225,800,000,000.00… to quote Keanu Reeves, “Whoa.”
But… in everything I’m reading and researching, I’m mostly seeing references to and an emphasis on physical health.
Lynn was wiser than that.
Our company started in 2014 with my sister and then-Chief-Plate-Spinner Lynn Peisker creating one for us. (Lynn’s currently helping out in the Marketing and Communications department at The University of Notre Dame, and they’re lucky to have her!)
We chose—one at a time—a physical, intellectual, and spiritual metric for which we wanted the rest of our company to hold us accountable.
Like many smart people, Lynn realized that while physical challenges are great for company bonding and overall health improvement, there are other areas (in Lynn’s case for us, intellectual and spiritual) that comprise the holistic concept of wellness.
Here, Dave Ramsey talks about Zig Ziglar’s Wheel of Life:
As Lynn transitioned out of the company and moved to South Bend, we lost focus. We renewed our focus early last year but only on physical health.
We measured and rewarded personal goals and helped each other stay accountable.
Each month, each team member would select a physical goal:
- I’m going to drink 80 oz. of water every day.
- I’m going to cut out soda.
- I’m going to do yoga invented by professional wrestlers.
Each month, Dee and I pay a $50 gift card of the team member’s choice if they successfully accomplished their goal. We gave one mulligan-day – meaning if you blew it one day, you could get back up on the horse without penalty…
Our first rethinking…
But what if someone blew a couple days within the first ten of the month? There was no real incentive to continue to participate.
So we switched to a weekly plan – $12.50/week – and we pay out monthly. This way, if you accidentally trip over a tray of donuts at Krispy Kreme one week, you can get right back at it the next week.
But last month Deidre realized it wasn’t enough.
Our second rethinking…
We’re coming back full circle (or wheel) to Lynn’s original plan – not limiting ourselves to the purely physical aspect of our goals.
We’re starting simply: by saying you can choose a physical goal or one of Ramsey’s other six spokes of his wheel.
I’m excited we’re looking more holistically at ourselves and each other. I believe a healthy company is a happy company.
What excites you? Do you have resolutions or goals? Systems or processes? Does your company have a wellness plan? Does it work for you?
