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?• 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

HABITS of

HIGHLY EFFECTIVEWELLNESS PROGRAMS

POWERFUL LESSONS IN CORPORATE HEALTH

7The

Feeding the Golden Goose

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

• The wellness and business• Tremendous potential for

change

• Some wellness advocates suggest that this should be incorporated into a companies mission statement

Chemical Emotional

Physical

Wellness

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

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Metro Police

• Metro Police:– Stress reduction

First ScotrailImplemented 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

Stress53%

low back pain36%

chronic i l lness/injury11%

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

15.8

34

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Health Awareness ErgonomicIntervention

Manual Therapy

Return On Investment of three types of Health Intervention in the Workplace in the UK,(Source: Price Waterhouse Coope,

2008)

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 non-pharmaceutical arena:– Vitamin D

• Medical breakthrough• Thousands of papers for

use against– 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