Workplace wellness

How a few local organizations have encouraged employees to adopt healthier habits — and improved morale as a result.

Eric Moon restocks the fridge at the Holmes Organisation.

Cara Mohler can often be seen walking around the office with her pedometer strapped to her waist.

Mohler, 32, a senior customer service representative at the Holmes Organisation, tracks the number of steps she walks each day, and at the end, if she hasn’t reached her goal, “that’s not a good thing,” she says.

Like Mohler, many of the employees at the insurance provider have taken the practices they learned through the company’s wellness program and made them a part of their everyday lives.

At the Holmes Organisation, there are no vending machines full of soda or Snickers bars. Instead, employees can find bottles of water and healthy snacks, such as freshly cut strawberries. They can also head to a wellness cubicle to check their blood pressure, educate themselves on nutrition and health issues such as diabetes, and track their pedometer usage and steps.

“It’s not always just fitness. It’s eating. It’s sleeping. It’s dealing with stress. It’s all aspects of wellness,” explains Eric Moon, the wellness coordinator at Holmes, adding that 90 percent of the company’s 53 employees regularly track their physical activity at the cubicle.

Prior to Moon’s tenure as coordinator, the Holmes Organisation had a wellness plan, but it had no “rhyme or reason,” Moon says. In November 2008, he began creating various programs and initiatives he believed would help not only the employees but the employer as well.

“We want people to be empowered, engaged in self-care, to understand their bodies,” he says.

Employees, Moon notes, are only at work eight hours a day; yet the employer must pay for 24-hour-a-day health coverage, “so the employer has a certain investment in you and what you’re doing in your free time,” Moon says.

Healthy behaviors translate to the home and family as well, Moon says.

Mohler has taken some of her healthy behaviors home to her husband. When he gets off work and comes home late at night, he always wants a snack, she says. Instead of reaching for chips or cookies, he grabs a fruit smoothie she prepared for him earlier in the evening.

Wearing her pedometer regularly is another behavior Mohler learned from Moon and his Destination America initiative. As part of the 10-month program, participants walked the equivalent distance from Tulsa to another city in hopes of not only improving their health but also earning a trip to that destination.

“It incentivized our folks so well that now they walk on their own,” Moon says. “They don’t need a big carrot at the end of the trail.”

But competitions remain popular, he and Mohler say. The company is now starting the Holmes 250, in which employees aim to walk 250 miles in 10 weeks.

“Everyone likes a goal,” Moon says.

THE CITY'S ROLE

The Tulsa Health Department is helping local companies create their own workplace health initiatives.

Working for Balance is a free program in which city health department workers visit and assess employees and the company and make recommendations for the best wellness practices, says Jill Almond, wellness coordinator for the Working for Balance program.

Working for Balance offers 25 interventions — everything from a general employee health assessment to how to create an employee wellness center onsite. The assessment is free, but all other interventions have a fee.

Since October 2007, when the Working for Balance program began, 22 local companies or groups have taken part. One of the most potentially beneficial interventions is the health screening, through which health workers collect employees’ blood and hemoglobin work and take readings for cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar. The individuals receive the results onsite and learn what the numbers mean.

“We don’t want anyone leaving without someone interpreting their results for them,” Almond says. “At that time, they’re given literature to support them and the option of getting the results sent to their physician.”

Last fall, Beverly Burke, Jenks Southeast Elementary School nurse, brought in the team from Working for Balance to assess school employees who wanted to take part in the program. The employees received blood pressure, body fat and cholesterol screenings, as well as health education.

The assessment was ideal, Burke says, because not all employees have health insurance that covers a traditional physical and employees did not have to make an appointment because screenings were offered during school hours. Plus, she adds, many times a “doctor just calls and says everything is OK” without explaining what the results mean.

With Working for Balance, the employees understood their results and learned what they could improve on, she says.

WORKPLACE HEALTH AT A GLANCE

• Approximately 26 percent of worksites used incentives such as discounts and cash to increase employee participation in wellness programs.
• A blood pressure assessment was the most common screening among worksites surveyed.
• Fifteen percent of worksites offer onsite fitness facilities, while 14 percent offer fitness or walking trails.
• For every $1 spent, $3.50 will be saved through health care costs and reduced absenteeism.

Sources: 2004 National Worksite Health Promotion Survey, U.S. Workplace Wellness Alliance