Summary: Today, an employer must be concerned with healthcare costs and obesity due to the implications of rising health care costs on employers’ bottom-lines. There are clear ways to cutting costs and health care risks. This article outlines accessible, affordable ways for doing so with better workplace nutrition.
CORPORATE WELLNESS PROGRAMS PRODUCTIVITY
- REDUCING YOUR COMPANY'S HEALTH CARE COSTS WITH BETTER WORKPLACE NUTRITION -
Excerpts from an Interview with Judi Ryan of Cadmus Communications
By Peggy Tate
Healthcare professionals almost unanimously agree that many healthcare issues, including heart disease and diabetes are exacerbated by poor nutrition and lack of healthful physical activity. Companies today, by providing health insurance and other benefits related to health, are carrying much of the responsibility for employees' health. As with any other type of business risk, if an employer can find an inexpensive way to avoid the catastrophic impact of a heart attack or an amputation, both in terms of an employee’s quality of life and the staggering associated costs, it would be awfully shortsighted to not enthusiastically embrace an opportunity to do so, even for what seems like a personal matter such as healthcare.
Employees need to fully understand the connection between nutrition and physical activity and its impact on their health and, to the fullest extent possible, have access to healthier food choices and some form of support for increased physical activity. In fact, over and above avoiding catastrophic illnesses, major benefits can be derived for both employees and employers when nutrition is improved and physical activity is increased, including greater productivity and reduced absenteeism.
Recently, Peggy Tate with Workplace Wellness Works interviewed Judi Ryan with Cadmus Communications for her ideas on this subject. Judi is the Wellness Coordinator with Cadmus, a printing and publishing company. The company employs approximately 3,500 associates and is well-known and respected for its progressive commitment and successes in workplace wellness. Below are excerpts about nutrition from the interview, which was conducted in December 2006.
Judi: It seems as though no matter what you do, when you make changes that impact lifestyle behaviors, the foundation for that is nutrition and physical activity. When you stop and think about blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, etc., anytime you reduce weight, anytime you eat healthier, that helps with these problems. Of course, that in turn perhaps helps you not to have a heart attack or if you've had one, by exercising and eating better, your chances of not having another are greatly improved.
After the first year of health screenings, through the data that we collected, we saw clearly that we needed to work on people's nutrition and their physical activity. So, we had nutritionists come on site and help people understand what it means to eat right – how to eat and what they should eat in a balanced diet and that sort of thing.
Additionally, we're self‑insured so we worked the program out with CIGNA HealthCare whereby an employee can have six sessions with a nutritionist and pay only the Specialist Co-pay. Nutritionists are very expensive: They usually run between $100 and $150 but we arranged for our employees to pay only $35. That's an excellent approach that has also been utilized by our employees to learn more about eating better.
Healthy Vending
Judi: We have our healthy vending program, and we're really, really pleased with that.
Peggy: I know that VendStream is your healthy vending management company. Can you describe what the program is like, how it's structured, and what the impact has been, what it was like implementing it, and pricing, etc?
Judi: What we have done is require that 25 percent of the vending has to be healthy. At our location here at Corporate, we have 80 percent healthy vending. That's more than the norm, but we feel real good about that, because like I said in the past, we have quite a few healthy people here and people who know what it takes to be healthy. That's one of the things we do.
I think that (implementing healthy vending) was a difficult task so I am glad we outsourced that responsibility to VendStream; healthy vending is their specialty.
I think people don't want change. People like their junk food, and when vending machines are available to them stocked with lots of junk food, it's very easy to stick with old eating patterns. However, we have manufacturing environments, and one of the things we recognized is that we have people that work 12‑hour shifts, most of the food that they ate came from work (vending and on-site food service offerings). For some reason, people don't tend to bring lunches from home very often. They would rather run across the street to the 7‑11 or the McDonald's or whatever, or to eat out of the cafeteria or the vending machines. As a result, vending machines can become a primary source of nutrition for employees.
We knew that making the vending installation healthier would be a difficult transition for employees and it certainly was, at first. Working with VendStream, we came up with some fantastic programs for each of the locations, which we tried to tailor to their unique circumstances.
Opening At the Richmond plant specifically, we had a manufacturing environment with a cafeteria that absolutely was ridiculous from a healthy food stand-point: The food was horrible. Of course, everybody loved it. The provider offered fried chicken and the greens and the butter floating and all that. I mean, the thought of eating from there…we just knew it wasn't healthy at all. There was nothing healthy in the cafeteria, so what we did is we worked closely with VendStream and decided to close down the cafeteria, which was barely supporting itself and created a full scale vending café.
As I mentioned, we have at least 25 percent healthy items. But the biggest impact, I think, was in our manufacturing environments where we put banks of machines with healthy meals, and even if they were prepackaged, we offered healthy sandwiches, fruit and things that people should be eating. Especially if that was their dinner, we wanted some hot foods, some cold foods, but we also wanted them to have fruit and different choices. I think that has been a huge success. We've had nothing but rave comments about it, and we can't keep the vending machines full. That is the biggest problem we have, which is a good problem to have.
We also charged employees less for the healthier foods, snacks and sodas than for the unhealthy items. People at first just could not believe we would do something like that. Now it's just so readily accepted. It's amazing how they turned around in two years from when we first started. We still have our issues at times, but I think they're worked out very well and for the most part people are very, very happy with our vending.
Other Food Offerings at Work
Peggy: From time-to-time I hear that some companies are very sensitive about the nutritional message they are sending when, for example, they provide a traditional birthday cake for birthday parties. Instead, companies are starting to offer fruit instead, like sliced apples or fruit salad and otherwise trying to create a culture where people are more careful about what they eat. Are you specifically addressing those type issues in your wellness strategy?
Judi: Yes, we certainly are. For example, we had a holiday luncheon yesterday, and what I did is make sure that the food is as healthy as possible. People have learned to really appreciate that. We still have a few sweets but we also give the employee the opportunity to have fruit if that's what they would prefer. So, that's the kind of things we do.
You know, you can't quit living and you can't eliminate every sweet in your life or something else that you probably shouldn't be eating, but you can control it. That's what we try to do. We don't generally emphasize unhealthy foods when feeding our employees. It’s important to be consistent.
Weight Watchers
Judi: We are a national account for Weight Watchers and what that means is that we could offer our employees four different options: 1) Weight Watchers meetings on site at our Cadmus locations, 2) employees could do vouchers to attend meetings at the Weight Watchers out in the community, 3) an at-home kit, and 4) an online program.
All four of those options are given to the employee to decide which one they would like to do and we subsidize it by 25 percent. We've had great success with that. Every location does different things. We've had quite a few at-home kits purchased and also online was big in certain locations. In the manufacturing environment, that wouldn't be big because blue collar workers don’t typically spend a lot of time on the Internet, but that's where the Weight Watchers on site is preferred. Also we have some people who want to use a doctor for weight loss so they do this locally.
Peggy: You had mentioned that Cadmus is subsidizing the cost of Weight Watchers by 25 percent. What is the cost?
Judi: It varies by location. That's another thing; you can't say there's just one price. For instance, here in Richmond at the plant, 14 onsite meetings for the Cadmus Associate was $101.25. The cost per meeting is usually anywhere from $11 to $14, although the Weight Watchers in Pennsylvania charges more. What I didn't realize in the beginning was that Weight Watchers is actually franchised in different locations. So that's why they charge amounts and even have different programs in different locations, even though they're an international company.
For instance, for local vouchers, we pay $97.50 for ten vouchers (and I think even if you go there and get a discount for buying ten of them, it would be well over $120). With the at-home kit, which lasts for six months, you get telephone counseling, if you'd like that, and a very good scale and all the books and other literature and information for $134.25. That's our per person price. The online subscription for three months was $41.25.
Peggy: I know that you have some variation by location, but generally speaking, what's the level of interest in that the Weight Watchers program?
Judi: We only offered this to our 9 U.S. locations and the interest level and format preference varied. Some locations wanted all at-home kits; some locations wanted the on‑site meetings. And I'm pleased to say that even at our 400 employee location here in Richmond, we've had an ongoing Weight Watcher program onsite for about one and a half years now. So that is really good.
You have to have at least 20 people for Weight Watchers onsite meetings, and fortunately for our location, we don't have that many people overweight. Most people here are very health conscious, so for that reason we decided, "Well, let's contact the company upstairs and see if they would be willing to join with us and get 20 people." And we were able to do that so, for the few people here that really wanted to join Weight Watchers and have that group support, it worked out very well.
Peggy: Are you seeing a lot of weight loss or are you hearing of stories that in the facilities where there is significant weight loss?
Judi: Yes, we have quite a few people who are now “Lifetime Members,” which means you have to weigh your goal weight. Last year, at our site manufacturing site, there was over 300 pounds lost in total. And here at the home office, we have had a tie of 200 pounds lost in our three consecutive sessions.
A lot of people only need to lose 20 pounds, but people forget that five pounds makes a big difference in your blood pressure and your cholesterol, so 20 pounds and, when you've only got 20 people participating, not everybody's going to lose 20 pounds. Some are going to lose more than 20. We had two people here, this year at Cadmus home office, with that team upstairs, who have already lost over 40 pounds in two sessions; each of them. So, I think that's remarkable and will make a difference in their health overall.
Peggy: I believe Alice Fay with CIGNA, told me that there was an employee at one of the locations that had lost about 100 pounds. Is that correct?
Judi: Yes, that is true. They decided to do their own thing. Well this is before we started Weight Watchers as a national account where we gave all a 25% reduction in the cost. They designed a program in which they sort of followed “The Biggest Loser.” What they did is require each employee who wanted to participate to put in $5 a month for a year. Now, once a month, they got weighed. The person who lost the most, got a portion of the pot. – It didn't have to be the person who lost the most weight in pounds; it was the largest percentage of their body weight lost per month. Then, the second largest percentage winner, got a smaller portion of the pot. What was ever left in the pot was carried over for an entire year and, at the end of the year, the person who lost the largest percentage of body fat and weight won the whole remaining pot. The winner lost well over 100 lbs.
Summary:
With a few key, inexpensive initiatives, Cadmus Communications illustrates how a company can have a major positive impact on the health of employees and on the company’s healthcare expense overall.
Biography: Peggy Tate is President of VendStream Corporation. She can be reached at 404‑247‑6413.