Actually, we have over 550 wellness leaders about to spearhead the launch of our new PATH Adventure, “Brainstorm” – a wellness challenge focused on health and the brain.
Over the last two days, we met with more than 300 of these leaders, gathering to “brainstorm” healthy living tips and tools. They’ll take these tips back to their worksites and help a whole bevy of Vermont school employees march into spring with a fit and fortified character. All doing their part to keep Vermont one of the healthiest places to live!
The two days marked our 18th anniversary of these meetings and our 21st year in Vermont. Exciting times. Workplace wellness has never been stronger.
Recent surveys from Mercer, Towers-Watson, and others show that most employers want to offer wellness programming. According to Employee Benefits News (EBN), 91% of employers with more than 5,000 employees offer web-based wellness programs and on average spend $375 per-employee on incentives.
Our Vermont trust spends well under the average (about $250 and that includes everything – not just the incentives) and they are getting great results. Over 19,000 employees use the program in some form with nearly 13,000 doing our 10-week annual wellness challenge which we call the PATH Adventure.
Here’s the rub: EBN also reports that a majority of workers (60%) think their company is only moderately-to-not supportive when it comes to their efforts to be healthy. So, although employers offer wellness, and although employees are rising to the challenge, the workplace itself still has work to do when it comes to honestly fostering good health.
That’s why we have 550 on-site building leaders in the trenches. We train them well and send them out into the field to bolster the accomplishments of their colleagues. They are the true foot soldiers of wellness and culture change. And they are saving lives.
Each year 80% of our school worksites say at least one person made a lifestyle change that was life saving as a result of the program. What more could we ask for? A lifetime of healthy rewards would do it.
So let’s not get it their way. These wellness leaders don’t do this work for the money. Wellness is usually the 4th or 5th volunteer hat they wear. It’s a calling and it’s going to happen with or without “the management” because caring they do. If you saw the depth of joyful commitment on their faces yesterday, if you felt the energy they bring to the cause, you too would be bitten. Their efforts are a serious contagion we ought to leverage in these tenuous and costly health care times.
The persistent message we’ve gotten is that the wellness ground swell becomes a way of life when management and labor agree that supporting health is an all out win-win. When supervisors and key stakeholders support our champions of wellness, tides shift in double-time.
A call to action for all school administrators… Trust your wellness leaders, get involved, be a visible role model and help them prove that wellness makes a different. You’ll reap the rewards through greater employee commitment, more vital and energetic workers, lower health care costs, and, incidentally, better performance from your students. After all, health is academic.
Cheers to all the wellness leaders out there. Thank you for your ceaseless charge.
Send us your favorite wellness leader stories! Highlight a wellness leader on Facebook to celebrate his or her efforts today.
See you on the PATH Ahead.