This season, consider adding an already festive spice to foods and drinks. According to a study done by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, cinnamon lowered LDL cholesterol (that's the bad one) in patients with type 2 diabetes. In healthy patients, the study found that the addition of 6g of cinnamon to rice pudding lowered the glucose response in the body and slowed the rate at which food left the stomach, meaning subjects felt fuller for a longer period of time.
And chances are, you've already got some sitting in your spice rack right now! Mix ground cinnamon in your oatmeal, include it in your next stir-fry, or add a stick to a cup of eggnog. I mean, tea.
Warm up your wellness routine by bringing classes right to you!
US Workers put in the longest hours on the job in industrialized nations, clocking up nearly 2,000 hours per capita in 1997, the equivalent of almost two working weeks more than their counterparts in Japan, where annual hours worked have been declining since 1980.
Far be it from me to want to turn away work that could put food on the table for my staff, but as wellness consultants we are often asked by clients to address issues stemming from workplace stress. Probably no one is surprised to hear that many Americans find work stressful:
An NIOSH report from the early 1990s cites the following:
40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful;
25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives;
75% of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago;
29% of workers felt quite a bit or extremely stressed at work;
26% of workers said they were "often or very often burned out or stressed by their work."
The report goes on to quote an insurance company study that concluded "Problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than are any other life stressor-more so than even financial problems or family problems." Yikes.
Here's the freaky part, though. It gets worse. According to the American Institute of Stress an average of 20 workers are murdered each week in the U. S. making homicide the second highest cause of workplace deaths and the leading one for females. Many employees cite their or their co-workers increased job stress and lack of ability to cope with such stress with an increase in physical or verbal hostility in the workplace. 2 reports in 2000 compiled by Gallup and Integra revealed that:
14% of respondents had felt like striking a coworker in the past year, but didn't;
25%have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress;
29%had yelled at co-workers because of workplace stress;
14% said they work where machinery or equipment has been damaged because of workplace rage
19% or almost one in five respondents had quit a previous position because of job stress and nearly one in four have been driven to tears because of workplace stress;
62% routinely find that they end the day with work-related neck pain;
34% reported difficulty in sleeping because they were too stressed-out;
12% had called in sick because of job stress;
Over half said they often spend 12-hour days on work related duties and an equal number frequently skip lunch because of the stress of job demands.
If you can pick even three of these items and you feel they adequately describe your working environment, there is no amount of on-site yoga or wellness campaigns that can help. Your problem is systemic. That is not to say that yoga or corporate wellness can't help those employees who participate better cope with a stressful situation, but if you look around and see the signs of deteriorating health and humanity in your workplace chances are good you have bigger issues to address.
Where is this all coming from? I reached out to professionals on facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and the blogosphere to ask what they saw as the biggest sources of workplace stress. Their answers seemed to echo two main themes:
Lack of clarity and discipline in work processes.
Typified by responses like this: "This is related to employees who refuse to answer or even acknowledge emails. And, as a project manager, I'm held responsible for not having an answer. That's stressful for me."
"Process. Inefficient coordination that wastes time kills spirit. "
This includes: passive, unfocused or unclear communication or hierarchy among team members, lack of consensus or goals, poor accountability to project deadlines or deliverables, leading people to feel as though they were constantly firefighting rather than working effectively and productively.
- or -
Lack of empathy and understanding.
Typified by responses like this:
"Unreasonable expectations. Often of the, "I want an answer today!" type, when the standard timeline is several days."
"When everyone needs everything RIGHT NOW. Clients don't care that you have other projects or other clients."
"Treating everything as an emergency, as a top priority, while less urgent items are ignored to become tomorrows' emergencies. "
When coworkers or clients not taking time to define their own goals and understand project and time constraints, the ensuing lack of clarity in communication seems to drive people nuts. We can probably all recall a project fraught with: interrupting, introduction of scope creep, lack of respect for other organizational priorities, dropped balls which result in blaming and deviceiveness among team members, leading to micromanagement and disrespect for co-workers' expertise.
How do we stop this train wreck from happening? So here is the interesting part for me. Nope, wellness alone won't fix the underlying problems. This is something that even we have to grapple with as a wellness company. Perhaps the best advice we've had to offer in this arena is our own example. There is a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh that is displayed prominently in our office and included in every employee orientation at Recess.
"Our own life has to be our message."
Easier said than done. Especially if everyone at your company is communicating a different message. Getting everyone on the same page, unifying around a vision, mission, set of values and ways of doing business is hard work. It means that at every level of the organization people need to be given time to work on the business as well as in the business and that all new hires, client acquisitions and business decisions must be constantly evaluated through this lens.
Cameron Herold was COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? His leadership helped build a presence in 46 states, 9 provinces, and 4 countries while being ranked the “2nd Best Company to Work for in Canada” by Canadian Business Magazine and “the #1 Company in BC to Work for” twice by BC Business Magazine. During his tenure the company was studied by numerous MBA programs including Queen’s University in Canada & Harvard. Here's Cameron (please note, no subtitles provided for his Canadian accent):
He articulates in his talks the need for a broad and all encompassing vision that is then executed through a series of well orchestrated and disciplined internal processes and plans. Take a look at how that vision trickles down on a daily basis:
Even before starting Recess, I worked as a management consultant. When I showed up on client site I'd see everyone running around frantically, firing off emails after email, powering through lunch, working long days on projects that still never seemed to be done "right" or on time. The company that I worked for advocated a long painful process whereby clients aligned their work habits with long range planning and resource allocation and right sized their organizations rather than simply grabbing anyone breathing (only to leave a firing bloodbath once sales dried up).
I saw over and over that trying to implement suggestions like Cameron's can be difficult once organizational problems are endemic; however, doing so is probably the best way for an organization to achieve rapid business growth without churning and burning the exceptional employees and clients it worked so hard to find. If you really want to eliminate workplace stress then:
Define long term, mid term and short term goals based on vision.
Create systems that balance the skills, talents and availability of your workforce with a realistic plan for achieving your goals. This provides a basis for communicating your vision in a meaningful way to every person in your organization.
Manage the process. Track. Measure. Create structured and regular opportunities for employees to report on milestones, then get out of their way.
Of course the last bullet requires that you hire capable people who value your mission. Weed out employees, managers and clients who don't get it. Bad apples are like entropy inducing kryptonite for even the best run companies.
So while I don't want to discount the benefit that yoga and good health have on well being (after all I would be out of a job if that were the case), companies that wish to lessen the impact of stress should start by doing the difficult systemic work necessary to create a humane work culture. Culture isn't something you can get through a workplace personalysis or a ropes course. Best management practices improve your company's bottom line and make work a more predictable, reliable and sane place for the people that keep your organization afloat.
Are you updating your facebook status via Twitter from your iPhone as you apply your make-up or eat your burger on the drive to your next open enrollment meeting? Many Americans feel as though they are good at multitasking and engaging in multiple activities simultaneously leads them to believe they are accomplishing more.
In her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention And The Coming Dark Age, author Maggie Jackson points to a growing body of research studies that seem to suggest the opposite. A flood of stimulation, interruption and fleeting human contact have created a culture of "diffusion, fragmentation."
She points out the consequences of what most of us consider par for the course in our lives and working environments:
Interruption and the knowledge worker:
Knowledge workers switch tasks every three minutes. And once interrupted, a worker takes an average 25 minutes to return to their original task, according to informatics scientist Gloria Mark.
How often are we interrupted? The average worker gets 156 emails a day, according to the Radicati research group. And that's just the beginning; instant-messages, phone calls, faxes and snail mail add to the influx.
Making a national habit of multitasking:
Sixty-five percent of people eat while they drive.
Sixty percent of kids age eight to 18 multitask some or most of the time they're doing homework.
Twenty-five percent of restaurant meals are ordered from the car, up from 15 percent from 1988.
American kids are exposed on average to nearly six hours a day of non-print media.
Two-thirds of children under six live in homes that keep the tv on half or more of the time, an environment linked to attention-deficiencies.
Time and time again in the world of wellness we see this habitual tendency toward mindless overcommitment, interruption, and multitasking lead to programs that are too diffuse to do much good if the desired outcome is a healthier workforce and reduced health care costs. Why wellness fragmentation does not equal results
How does ROI for wellness work? It is more of a cost avoidance than an actual savings in most cases. Here is a simple (and maybe a little too simplistic) example to help walk you through the "savings."
Half of your workforce participates in a risk based population health strategy (wellness program) and the other half does not.
For the participating half of the population, whose risk is known, you are able to offer outbound (active) and passive programs that directly impact and address the risks you've identified as prevalent to this group.
Let's say the programs you've implemented are effective, engagement in them is high, and you retain these employees. Over a series of years you should see something happen that is counter to what will have happened with no intervention.
That is to say, this group will not get sick as often as non-participants because your interventions were effective and employees stuck around long enough for you to see results.
The non-participants at your company, as an aggregate, are an unknown entity to you. You have very little data on their risks and, as a group, they will most likely continue to use health care at the same rate as before.
Yet, if your company-wide wellness communications are effective and appealing, your participant group is vocal and influential, and your non-participants stay at your company without developing any major illness then some studies indicate that your wellness program might actually have a halo effect.
That is to say, even non-participants will learn a little more about self care whether they participate or not. Sure, that could slow the rate of health care cost growth in that group, though probably not by a lot.
Both groups' cost trends together is your overall trend. Both may continue to rise, but your participant group's trend over several years will rise more slowly - making your overall costs appear to grow more slowly.
UNLESS. Yes, there is an unless. Unless, your participant group is so small and the growth in the cost of health care is so large that your non-participants' health care usage effectively nullifies any impact you had on participants.
Wellness is not Wii Fit. You need to focus.
As much as we know that on an individual level good health is as simple as: sleep well, eat right, and move more, achieving a successful organizational wellness strategy is as much an art as it is a science. It takes focus, discipline and rigorous measurement to impact behavior, motivate and sustain participation, and to quantify results.
If your program is to be successful then you will need to engage a large chunk of your workforce, stratify their risks, and follow a disciplined series of steps over several years in order to see return on investment. Oh, and do all of this while simultaneously carrying out the core work of your company.
Fight the urge to multi-task
While multi-tasking may be transitioning out of vogue when it comes to work effectiveness, its cousin - work sequencing - can help break large and complex tasks into more manageable pieces.
Plan to succeed by drafting a multi-year strategy with a realistic timeline. Schedule monthly (core team), quarterly (key shareholders and decision makers) and annual reviews (company wide) of a the wellness program before you even begin work. This will hold you accountable for reporting progress toward implementing your strategy and plan.
Build up to maximum efficiency by starting with only a few key program components that will get you the most bang for your buck. Gradually add complexity as your initial program begins to show results.
More often than not, companies initially underestimate how much time it takes to implement a strategic wellness program. They allocate too few resources and take on too many program components to ever really get much traction. As a result, their programs suffer from poor participation due to fragmented management and the overall program shows high attrition. Plan intelligently and sidestep this common trap.
Will restricting HSAs and FSAs and tax credits help cut health costs?
So what do you think?
Workforce.com reported today that:
"The Senate Finance Committee will discuss controversial options that include curbing the tax-favored status of employer-provided health care coverage, wiping out health care flexible spending accounts and placing new restrictions on health spending accounts when it meets Wednesday, May 20."
How will this effect your company and its employees?
Will this change the kind of benefits you currently offer?
How will this impact your company's willingness to offer wellness and health benefits to your covered employees and dependents?
I was recently listening to an episode of This American Life titled, "Ruining It For The Rest of Us" where they featured stories about how easily one person's behavior can have a contaminating effect on others. One particularly haunting story covered the research of Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, who placed a confederate in a group and observed the impact that this "bad apple" had on the rest of the group. In nearly every case the influence of even one spoiler tarnished the productivity and the morale of the group. One thing that the researchers in Phelp's study didn't look at, however, is that poor health can impact mood. Could an apple a day and a brief jaunt outdoors help the bad apple get his mood back on track? Or could workplace health and wellness be a protective means of coping for those who might otherwise be affected by a bad apple?
How do health and mood interact in your workplace? Have you seen an instance where a bad apple lowered the productivity of a work group and subsequently led to more sick days or a reluctance of team members to show up for work?
Every kid can probably remember a schoolmate who was sent away to fat camp and forced to endure not only the mockery of fellow children, but also bland, paltry portions of undressed salad and other "diet" foods. Losing weight was never cool, but with the mercurial rise of reality shows, even fat camp has been buffed to a high gloss. Shows like The Biggest Loser and other reality diet shows feature die hard trainers who effectively supplant the participants' "lack of will" with their own shrill and uberfit war cries. They harass participants through bootcamp-like workouts (4-6 hours worth at a pop) and analyze their every bite. The results are - well - dramatic enough to capture the attention of a rapt television audience.
Corporate wellness programs seem to be picking up on the trend. Home grown Biggest Loser competitions are popping up all over in America's offices. Sure, this approach can work. Particularly when on someone else's dime and exercising 4-6 hours a day, but for the average working Joe or Josephine, dramatic weight loss can be a setup for disappointment.
And for the ambitious wellness program director? For starters your program might not actually be reaching the least healthy among your workers. A skinny pack a day smoker who does not exercise (unless you count lifting beer to mouth) and has a family history of illness may not have a lot to lose when it comes to shedding pounds.
While it may be tempting to assume that we can look at someone who is obese or overweight and judge their level of health, studies show that a moderately active obese or overweight worker is at less risk of disease than a thin co-worker with high stress, sedentary lifestyle, poor sleep habits, and a lousy diet. Some of the more serious risk factors for cardiac conditions and stroke (think cholesterol and high blood pressure) are not necessarily something you can determine by looking at a scale.
On top of that, if there are big prizes on the line there are actually plenty of unhealthy ways to show dramatic weight loss (think: dehydration, binging, diuretics, stimulants). About 65% of the human body is made of water. Do the math on that. Ask any amateur wrestler (you know the guys who basically wear garbage bags as they run around the block prior to being weighed in) and they can give you a few easy hints for ways to manipulate scale weight. Such tactics can dramatically alter scale weight; however, they put unnecessary stress on the body (dehydration and muscle loss) and the results are typically temporary at best.
Additionally, men have an advantage in the weight loss game. Men's hormonal makeup allows their bodies to rev up the fat burning engines. Women, and particularly those undergoing hormonal changes such as menopause, can still see tremendous benefits from exercise, but thanks to their hormones and body composition will see more gradual weight loss than most men.
So to recap:
'Skinny smokers' have little incentive to get healthy - there's not much to lose and have you ever tried running a mile after a cig? It's not fun.
Weight Loss competitions unnecessarily shame larger people. Health and its relationship to weight is complex. You could be singling out otherwise healthy people based mainly on their appearance, which is not exactly a textbook team building approach.
The fix is in. Offering prizes can emphasize unhealthy weight loss methods and put men at an advantage over women.
The graph below shows average excess medical cost per employee of various health risks. Do you think the Biggest Loser is going to do much to reduce the first two?
If your wellness goal is to improve the health of your workforce, emphasize friendly competition and team spirit, and improve productivity then is fat camp really for you?
Research shows pain relievers make matters worse Do you suffer from chronic headaches? Research indicates that as many as 50 percent chronic migraines sufferers and 25 percent of all headaches, are actually triggered by the overuse of common both prescription and over-the-counter drugs used to treat them.
So when your head is pounding is there anything you can do to stop the pain?
90% of headaches are primary headaches (i.e. not caused by another medical condition) and can be attributed to tension (tight muscles and spasms of the neck and back), vascular (migraine), and cluster (non medical causes such as stress).
Sitting for long periods without stretching or moving, jaw clenching, and the kind of physical habits we adopt at work can contribute to muscular tension. Short bouts of stretching (20 seconds of stretching every twenty minutes) and exercise (a 5 minute walk around the block) can ease muscular tension, will produce hormones that counter stress and help you relax. While you may not see immediate results, continued adherence to a self-care routine will lead to more overall relaxation and fewer headaches.
Are you ticked that health care seems to be more expensive every year and that it pays for less and less?
Upset that your pregnancy is treated the same as a life threatening illness?
Are you a small business owner who struggles to be able to offer competitive wages and health care for your workers?
Are you a worker who has employer sponsored health care, but still ended up paying huge amounts of money out of pocket when you or a member of your family had an accident?
Many of us can relate to one or all of these stories. Today, Obama appointed Tom Daschle to spearhead the health care reform efforts int he United States. The plan is to get started ASAP. The White House Transition Team is looking for feedback about health care reform from Americans. P Lease remember that democracy is not a spectator sport! Make your voice heard here before Dec. 31, 2008: http://change.gov/page/s/healthcare
If you need a little fodder to get you started feel free to borrow from what I wrote:
The reasons I care about health reform are as personal as the loss of my dear grandmother to preventable disease many years earlier than she needed to go and as global as wondering why a country that spends so much on medicine ranks so low in terms of population health. As a businessperson I also see that in America's current economy and society we've lost touch with food, community, with moving our bodies and this problem is not simply one of sloth, but of a system that on every level rewards the wrong behaviors - behaviors that ultimately don't lead to greater health and prosperity. Particularly I see this burden shouldered by poor people, people of color, small business and their employees - the very people who do the everyday work that has moved this country and economy. I very much appreciate this forum that you have created and hope that all Americans who are affected by this issue will make their voices and ideas heard.
1 - The end to subsidization of insurance companies whose model is patently ridiculous. Current federal programs divert money to health plans that do not manage that money effectively. $50,000 to amputate a foot but not $40 for a nutrition class for a diabetic because the amputation is deemed more "effective"? This is insanity. I literally heard the CEO of a major Oregon health plan tell a room of 250 insurance brokers that "prevention doesn't work." From their business model's perspective this may be true, but from a societal perspective these are reckless words.
Having worked intimately with the behind the scenes claims and health reporting data from various health plans, the inefficiencies are rife. These organizations should be subject to standardized reporting of qualitative and quantitative claims/portfolio data - similar to SEC reports for publicly traded companies, but around various health benchmarks and other efficiency and quality of care metrics. These metrics should be publicly available so that we can truly evaluate the quality of managed care between carrier portfolios. Currently there is no telling which business is better run because the all quantify their metrics differently. It is MADDENING. With as much money and public well-being that is at stake I cannot believe how inefficiently the insurance industry is run, bench marked and evaluated. It's the wild wild west out there.
2 - HIPAA not only is not working the way it was intended, but is is a meaningless drain on health care providers. I say this not as a provider, which I am not, but as a consumer who thinks the mountains of paperwork and red tape are wasteful and environmentally destructive and as a business owner who knows how flimsy those stacks of paper really are in preventing health information from getting into the "wrong hands."
HIPAA is useless, a drain on time and resources that could be better spent on implementing IT and training the health professionals who use it. We also need a system where providers are rewarded for doing the right thing - referring patients to preventative programs and screens, social workers and triage prior to escalating preventable situations past the point of reason. Often, as is referenced above, this unfortunate situation stems from a lack of incentive for the health care provider since insurance companies will pay for costly, surgical treatments but may seldom fund prevention. I think all we need to do is look at the most profitable providers and business segments in health care to see the perversity of misplaced financial incentives on public health.
3 - Employers and private business pay more than a third of the total cost of health care in the United States (and that is only when you don't count one of the biggest employers - the federal government). The cost of health care is a drain on the bottom line - to be sure - but employers are also in part responsible for the problem. Ultimately the CDC says that 75% of health care spending is on chronic, preventable illness. Many of these illnesses could be slowed or prevented through better diet and exercise.
American workers work the longest hours of any industrialized nation. We spend most of our waking hours at work, have little time or energy outside of a long day of work to engage in our personal health. The solutions offered by many employers (normally health fairs, Web portals and other such nonsense offered for free through their health plan) are cheap, unimaginative and ineffective at encouraging better employee health. And these are the employers who are actually trying to make an impact.
Employers need tax incentives for putting in place effective, multi-component health promotion programs that have high levels of employee engagement. High levels of engagement (over 40% eligible) are key, as many programs that I have seen behind the scenes that are offered by employers tend to have low engagement (10% or less) and are usually used most by employees who are already healthy. This is not acceptable. The workplace is a very good place to offer healthy food and exercise alternatives and to encourage such behavior.
Those employers who are brave enough to recognize that this is not just a public service but that it also benefits the bottom line in terms of productivity, employment brand and absenteeism should be given a bit of a financial break in the early years of the program when it is less likely to show economic return. This could come in the form of tax credits or relief from paying into a health care fund (if that is the plan) if they show evidence of mutli-component wellness programs with high engagement.
4 - Ask any American to name 5 whole grains. My guess is you will have a hard time finding many who can. We are completely out of touch with our food system, our bodies and our health as Americans. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that if you took all of the Americans who: do not smoke, maintain a healthy weight, consume five or more fruits and vegetables per day, and exercise the surgeon’s general’s recommended 30 minutes 5 days per week, you’d have a whopping 3% of the US population.
We need an inspiring, fun, grassroots movement to work on building systems that connect eaters with local farmers, promoting whole foods, encouraging children to cook. We need a movement and an example from our leaders that helps bring back the American meal - enjoyed over the family table rather than the fast food counter. At the end of the day if we are going to turn this ship then we need people engaged and healthier. We can do a lot to shift costs and make the current broken system more efficient, but we must also shift the bedrock of disincentives to being healthy that we as a culture have in place. Investing a spirit of fun, adventure, service and goodwill into this (instead of the same, tired, sorry guy in a white lab coat approach of past public health messages) will capture the imagination and inspire.
I thank you for creating this forum to discuss a topic that is of central importance in my life and the lives of so many people. I believe that when we as humans are healthy that it improves everything in our lives - our vitality, our engagement in our world and so I am heartened by your efforts and hope I can be one of the many who make them a resounding success.
$700 billion?! Pffffttt! The bailout is for wimps!
Think the Wall Street credit crisis is bad for business? Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! I heard a commentary on NPR where an economist being interviewed referred to health care as a “train barreling down on the US Economy.” And while everyone is busy untying the maiden that is the finance industry from the tracks, our back is turned to the real threat chugging toward us with increasing speed.
At $700 billion the current financial bailout is roughly equivalent to 5% of the US GDP. That’s chump change compared to the more than 16% of GDP (yes, that’s over $2.2 trillion) the US spent on health care in 2007. Pop quiz: What’s 34% of 2.2 trillion? Trick answer: The portion of the health care bill that is paid by business. The costs of poor health are outpacing wages, inflation and GDP. By a lot. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Health care spending has risen about 2.4 percentage points faster than GDP since 1970.
The train shows no signs of slowing. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that by 2016 health care spending will be over $4.1 trillion, or, about 20% of GDP. Okay now do the math again! What’s 34% of $4.1 trillion? Answer: If you are planning to be in business in 9 years then we better get this credit crisis solved or you won’t be able to borrow enough money to pay for health care expenses!
Oh and by the way, this is all happening at a point where growth in corporate profits is on the decline and American productivity has reached an all time high – holding steady after impressive gains. In its annual report the International Labor Organization stated “The difference in [productivity] rankings can be explained by the fact that annual working hours per person employed are considerably higher in the United States than in the majority of European economies.” Unless business plans on lobbying for more hours in a day, their best bet for improving worker productivity will be investing in worker health.
In a study funded by the RAND Corporation, Soeren Mattke and his colleagues stated that “Annual US health-related productivity losses are estimated to reach some $260 billion, attributable not only to absenteeism but also to presenteeism (being present at work but working at a reduced capacity)”. Yes, you did the math correctly, that is $10 billion more than the current infusion of cash that the US treasury will be putting into American banks, but this number directly impacts business’ bottom line!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says chronic diseases are responsible for 75 percent of the $2 trillion spent on health care in 2005. Such diseases can be dramatically improved by things like: better diet, exercise and self-care. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that if you took all of the Americans who: do not smoke, maintain a healthy weight, consume five or more fruits and vegetables per day, and exercise the surgeon’s general’s recommended 30 minutes 5 days per week, you’d have a whopping 3% of the US population.
So what do employees’ health habits have to do with business?!? Quite a bit as it turns out. American workers spend close to 2,000 hours per year on the job. At the end of a long work day, a half an hour commute and a family waiting to be fed, how many people are realistically going to change and head back out to exercise for 30 minutes? Would you?
If we are going to stop this train then Americans need help with their health. Serious help. Currently the place where they spend the majority of their waking hours is not effectively reinforcing healthy behavior. When it comes to employee health you are competing against things like: physical exhaustion, donuts, prepared foods, comfortable couches, a pack of smokes, and beer! Your savviest competitor’s slickest product has nothing on beer!
If you are busy freaking out about the credit crisis and have relegated employee health to some dark little corner of your organization where the sad, unimaginative and ineffective solutions proposed to reverse the state of your workers' health fly in the face of reality, then good luck with that and we’ll see you in the bread line in 2016.
A fresh, innovative, personalized approach to wellness.
Here, having fun is the key to being healthy. Life's too short for diets, gyms and one-size-fits-all programs. It's time for more exciting and realistic possibilities. It's time for Recess.
ather, for I have cinned.
