By Kellie Walters, Ease@Work Wellness Intern

The Problem…

 How is wellness affecting your employees?

 Think about it.

 Do you see people slouching over their desks, only to be out sick for back pain later?

• Is one of your employees eating junk food every day and ends up having to leave early because of stomach pains?
• Do employees sit at their desk all day and steadily increase in weight?
• Does an employee end up on disability because of a work related injury that may have been prevented if they were in better shape?
• Has an employee missed work because of a heart attack or other serious condition?

Now think about how that affects your profits.

For many employers, 20% of the workforce accounts for 80% of the health care claims. Heart disease, asthma, mental health disorders, cancer, and hypertension are the major drivers of health care costs. Besides requiring doctor visits, these conditions often require a great deal of daily medication. Karin Palmer, R.D., and co-creator of the EASEy Weigh program explains, “Some of the highest costs in healthcare claims come from prescription medications – your blood-pressure meds and cholesterol reducing meds like Lipitor and other designer medications.  What makes this even more expensive is that you are often refilling them on a monthly basis, unlike periodic visits to the doctor.” 

The Solution…

Many of the above conditions (and their costs) could be prevented with behavioral and environmental changes. By eating better, exercising, quitting smoking, reducing stress, and stopping substance abuse you can help reduce the incidence of these conditions and, in turn, help reduce health care claims. As an employer, you can help your employees turn things around and get back into health.

Employers can make a few workplace changes to create a healthy workplace culture. The process of eliminating unhealthy triggers and surrounding employees with healthy choices will help facilitate change. A wellness program should be centered on prevention, have a definite focus, and involve some sort of system to measure success. The following are some components to consider including:

Make healthy the only option…or at the very least, an option.

            Too often, employers promote “workplace wellness sabotage” where donuts are strategically placed in the most visible office areas and where staff meeting refreshments consist of sodas and chips. Vending machines are stocked with sugary and fatty snacks. Instead, start serving fruit and stocking up on healthy snacks. If better food is accessible, people are more likely to eat it.    

Make the office a place for fitness.

            How convenient would it be to get in a workout on your lunch break or right before you leave for the day? Giving employees a place to work out will help them do it more. 

Get up and go!

            Get your employees up and moving. Encourage employees to take those few steps over to another office to ask a question instead of sending someone an email. Create a lunchtime walking group. To really get employees up and moving, hand out pedometers and offer a prize to the biggest stepper.

Promote a smoke-free environment.

            Policies on tobacco in and around the workplace vary, but one thing about tobacco use is universal – it does affect health and health care costs. If you are looking to do something in this area, consider offering tobacco cessation coaching to your employees. Create policies that prohibit smoking on the property or taking smoke breaks.  A health insurance premium discount on non-tobacco using employees is very effective, but sometimes controversial.  Be careful not to call it a penalty for smokers, which is a violation of ERISA.

Counseling Services

            Stress, poor mental health, and substance abuse can have a negative impact on employee health. Not only is mental health crucial to well being, it is also important for good physical health.

 Wellness Committee

           When instituting a wellness program, you should create a wellness committee to champion these changes. Ideally, this committee will have 3-5 people who represent the goals of the program and drive it forward.  Try to get representation from as many departments as possible, so that they can have a positive effect on participation and input can be obtained from throughout the company.

 On site weight management programs

            Consider bringing in an on site weight management program. Chances are many of your employees already want to do something like this but don’t think they have the time. By bringing it into the workplace, employees are more likely to stick with it.

Some final tips…

• Don’t expect to see changes overnight. Studies have shown that it takes three- to five-years for wellness programs to take effect.
• Recognize that there are resources out there for you. Consider community resources that can help you implement some of these programs.

Sources:

Wellness Council of America. “Creating a Culture of Wellness: A WELCOA Quick Inventory.” 2009.

Sibson Consulting. “Results from Sibson’s Heath Enterprise Study.” 2011.

By Stephanie Patek

For most of us, the holiday season is filled with family…and food. Unfortunately, the edibles aren’t always the healthiest, as we munch on cookies and pies, and we sip eggnog, cocktails and other high calorie and high fat options. The key word is options – and you do have them. You can choose to make, purchase and eat healthier treats.

Here are a few suggestions:

When mixing your favorite beverage, use low-calorie mixers, seltzer, and low-fat milk or evaporated milk versus cream or half-and-half.

When baking cookies or other desserts, use lower-calorie, more natural substitutes such as low-fat plain yogurt in place of oil, and brown rice syrup instead of sugar. Use neufchatel cheese (light cream cheese) versus the full fat type. Cinnamon also gives a sweeter taste, so you can reduce sugar and use this for added flavor in many dishes.

Swap out higher-calorie choices for similar goodies. For example, instead of a slice of pumpkin pie, try this extremely quick and easy pudding:

Pumpkin Pudding

Combine 1 cup canned pumpkin with 1 sugar free or fat free vanilla pudding pack. Add pumpkin pie spice (or sprinkle on cinnamon and clove) to taste. This recipe is so easy, you can make as little or as much as you need, without difficult calculations.

Visit www.cookinglight.com or www.epicurious.com for other healthy holiday recipes and tips.

You are capable of getting through the season without guilt! Be sure to compare labels and look for the lower sugar and lower fat choices.

To view the “naughty list” of holiday foods, visit www.webmd.com/food-recipes/slideshow-naughty-list-of-holiday-foods.  If you do choose to splurge, find out how many calories you are actually consuming (and how long you’d have to walk to work them off). Visit http://walking.about.com/library/cal/blholidaycalories.htm.

Ease@Work offers nutritional coaching for employees with access to our EAP or wellness services as a benefit through their employer.  For more information, go to www.easeatwork.com.

By Stephanie Patek, Ease Account Manager and Fitness Coaching Supervisor

It is quite unlikely for an untrained, although somewhat active person, to step out on the pavement and complete a half-marathon (13.1 miles), especially without pain or injury. It is similarly unlikely for a sedentary individual to complete a shorter distance, such as a 5K (3.1 miles) without following a structured training program.

I’ve seen all too many individuals who intend to tackle a goal, and end up backing out of a race because they failed to follow a progression plan. Perhaps they became too insecure about crossing the finish line, or fell to injury because they detoured from their program and pushed themselves too hard at the beginning.

Like the progressive nature of successful running programs, the same philosophy can be applied to workplace wellness challenges.

Progression is key.

Behavior change usually requires a lengthy process of breaking a bad habit – 21 days according to most research. Change also requires the persistence to adopt or expand upon a healthy habit – yet another 21 days. It is critical when designing a wellness challenge that the challenge is designed to indicate a level of improvement over time.

A “progressive” set of goals can be the fulcrum of change, and capture an audience that needs some time to adjust to a “fit” lifestyle.

As an example of this process, during a recent challenge facilitated at the Center for Families and Children over the course of 8-weeks, participants were asked to increase their level of exercise from 90 minutes a week (for weeks one, two and three) to 120 minutes a week (for weeks four, five and six), ending with 150 minutes per week (for weeks seven and eight.) Twenty-percent of the employees who participated in the challenge successfully progressed through the full progression of increased activity. And, although the results appear to be low, in actuality those employees who met the challenge increased their minutes of exercise by 40%.

Tougher challenges yield greater- measurable – results.

Similar, tougher challenges – facilitated in a progressive nature – can offer immediate post-challenge insight on health improvement. Not simply that the employees completed a challenge and finished, but that they did make measurable improvement in their fitness over a course of time.

Tracking healthy outcomes through workplace wellness programs can be challenging. We often hear statements from both vendors and employers commenting that the success of wellness programs is “tough to measure.”

By implementing a progressive format in your workplace wellness challenge, your organization can immediately pinpoint those employees who have successfully “trained” to improve their health. In as little as eight weeks, a significant impact can be made to the physical capabilities of employees completing challenge.

I encourage those dedicated to wellness in the workplace to think past the minimum basic health standards set by health agencies; to encourage staff to go beyond the minimum amount of exercise needed, and present a training challenge that will actually make a significant healthful impact for each individual who participates.

Ease@Work improves workplace wellness as both a benefit to employees requiring individualized assistance with nutrition, fitness, smoking cessation, stress, etc., but also as a tool for management. We assist management with the establishment of wellness committees and the implementation of wellness programming and even challenges like the one outlined above.  For more information visit our website or click contact us above.  Your message won’t get lost in cyber-space, we promise.

by Patrick Gaul

Building and maintaining a board of directors can be a challenge for many organizations. Ideally the motivation for a potential board member should be passion for the service your agency provides.  It is also important to have the right mix of board members.  “Diverse boards are better able to expand capacity and weather tough times” according to the article Board Diversity: Your Biggest Challenge in the May/June 2009 issue of Nonprofit World.

If you are looking at ways to improve development, why not look at the things you highlight when recruiting employees?  Are there any benefits that can be efficiently extended to board members?

I recently had a conversation with an administrator at a non-profit Ease@Work customer.  She had been telling a board member about the new fitness coaching service we had recently added to our program.  This board member was interested in this service because, like most of the US population, she was looking for help with weight loss.  

She called us to ask if they were allowed to include board members in the census of covered employees.  My immediate answer was yes, of course she could.  When I checked their contract I learned she could even do so without incurring any additional cost because adding their board members would not increase their numbers beyond the maximum allowable under our agreement.

Ann Kent, the Non-Profit Services Director at Business Volunteers Unlimited told me, while there are no laws against offering something of value to a volunteer board member, our customer should check her organization’s bylaws.  In this case, since this agency can offer our program to their board at no cost, it is highly unlikely that the bylaws will forbid it.  In most cases our agreements are based on a per employee rate.  Even then, at approximately $2 per employee per month our program should be well within any limits set in the bylaws.  

In many cases the benefits offered by your organization will be too costly to extend to your board members and may not be needed by the board member.  Health insurance comes to mind.  Your board members probably already have access to an EAP as well.  However, if they work for a large national company they probably do not have an EAP that offers as many high quality local resources like in-person fitness or nutritional consultations. When they find out how inexpensive it is, they’ll applaud you for making such a wise benefit choice.

Dr. Dawson presenting "The Upcoming Retirement Wave: What HR Needs to Know" at the 2009 Cleveland HR Star Conference.

The 2008-2009 economy may have delayed retirement for some, but be assured, the delay is only temporary. With approximately 80 million Baby Boomers in the U.S., many are already planning their exit strategy from the work place – whether or not the economy cooperates.

What Impact Will Retirements Have on HR?

Major waves of retiring employees could potentially leave some businesses reeling from changes. HR needs to start thinking about the following critical issues now.

• Succession planning
• Knowledge transfer
• Multiple generations in the work place
• Pension/401K Plans
• Health care benefits
• Employee wellness programs

For HR and Retirees Alike, The Time to Make Plans is Now, written by Dickson Dawson, Ph.D., owner of Retirement Intentions, LLC and an Ease@Work retirement coach, spells out some of the things HR, and potential retirees, should be considering for future wellness.  He also presented “The Upcoming Retirement Wave: What HR Needs to Know” at the 2009 Cleveland HR Star Conference.  Follow the above link to download a copy of his presentation.

How would you rate your nutrition knowledge and food choices? Registered Dietitians (RD) are food and nutrition experts trained to help you take the science and put it into action. Dietitians can help you to:

• Lose weight
• Eat more healthfully
• Reduce your risk of chronic disease
• Separate fact from fiction about diet and healthy eating
• Provide practical solutions that produce results

Although sometimes called “nutritionists,” true nutrition experts are required to obtain a degree from an accredited university or college, complete a supervised internship, become registered, and maintain continuing education. In Ohio, dietitians must also be licensed (LD).

Eating Healthy on a Budget

Especially through tough economic times, it is important to eat healthfully. Added stress and long work days can lead to weakened immune systems and even weight gain. Dietitians are experts at working with your schedule, budget, and lifestyle, allowing you to make beneficial changes without unrealistic expectations or spending a fortune at specialty food stores.

Ease@Work offers Nutritional Coaching as part of the employee assistance program’s full compliment of Work-Life Services. Keeping organizational wellness in mind, the addition of Nutritional Coaching as an expanded EAP benefit offers employees access to the preventative healthcare assistance of a registered dietitian, a benefit not covered by traditional health care plans. This may not only help keep healthcare costs down for the organization, but it also supports wellness programs for a healthier, and more productive, workforce.

By Valerie S. Nosek

Anyone who has ever smoked knows how difficult it is to quit. I know because I smoked all through college and well into my adult life.

As I got older, and was well-hooked into the habit, I thought about quitting almost everyday. But then I’d feel stressed and felt I needed a smoke, or worst yet, I just wouldn’t even think about what I was doing and light up.

At the time, if you wanted to quit smoking, you basically went cold turkey. The gums and medications we have today weren’t available then to help smokers quit. (OK, I’m dating myself!) The point is, I can understand how smokers today, who want to quit, look to anything that will assist them.

But a recent article from CNN highlighted concerns about two drugs commonly prescribed to assist those who are trying to quit smoking. The article, Two Anti-Smoking Drugs to Carry Mental-Health Warnings, pointed out that while we know “smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death,” those using prescription medications Chantix and Zyban need to be aware that the medications have been reported to cause changes in behavior, including depression and suicidal thoughts.

The article quotes Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research as saying, “The risk of serious adverse events while taking these products must be weighed against the significant health benefits of quitting smoking. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death in the United States, and we know these products are effective aids in helping people quit.”

I know people who have used Chantix when they were quitting smoking. One person did very well with the prescription, the other did not. The person who did not do well with the medication was fortunate in that she was tuned in with her emotions and moods, so that she immediately recognized changes in her own behavior and feelings. She reported these to her doctor, who then took steps to take her off the prescription.

Recognizing that quitting smoking is the best thing that smokers can do for their health, the FDA does not say that these prescription aids for quitting should be avoided. But they do emphasize the importance of being monitored by your physician.

If you or someone you love is thinking about quitting, gone are the days of the solo mission. There is help available.

Look to:

• Your physician
• The American Lung Association
• The American Heart Association
• Community support groups
• Local “Quit Smoking” initiatives
• Your employee assistance program

When I quit smoking, I know the company I worked for offered an employee assistance program (EAP), but I never thought to go there for help. The EAP was promoted basically for those needing coping or mental health assistance.  Now that I work for an EAP, I realize that a comprehensive EAP offers so much more to employees and their families.  

Counselors skilled at helping people with other habits and addictions can be just as helpful when used for smoking cessation.  And, if smoking is related to stress, counselors can help to develop a smoking cessation plan that starts with stress coping techniques.

Believe me, anyone who smokes knows that it is bad for their health. Often, it’s not a matter of the “want” to quit, but it’s really about how hard… really hard… it is to quit. Find the support you need to do it.

And if you are a former smoker, or a company who has promoted a successful quit smoking initiative, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section here.

• What will you do after retirement?
• What impact will retirement have on your social life?
• How will your relationship with your spouse/partner change?
• Will you have enough money to live in the way you are accustomed to living?
• Do you have other interests/hobbies to pursue?
• Should you consider volunteering?
• Are you interested in a second career?
• What does “wellness” have to do with retirement?
• Will you be happy as a retired person?

Retirement Coaching for Employees

Working with a certified retirement coach can help employees assess retirement preparedness. Taking work-life wellness to another level, Ease@Work began offering retirement coaching in 2008 as an extended benefit of our employee assistance program (EAP).  Employees can access up to three hours of retirement coaching in the same way that they would access a counselor.

“We anticipated the need for retirement coaching based on the knowledge that the work force and employers, would be entering an unprecedented wave of retiring individuals with the baby boom generation,” said Patrick Gaul, Ease@Work Account Executive. “As an EAP with focus on the wellness of the organization as a whole, we felt that access to an expert was essential as employees considered this next stage of their lives and as management contemplates how to prepare for this turnover.”

The program also offers employers and their HR professionals guidance regarding managing the new challenges of high volume retirement, such as succession planning and transfer of knowledge.