WAIST NOT WANT NOT
What if your company could help you lose more than 80 pounds?
For Linda Stone, that was an offer she couldn't pass up.
Stone, a PBX manager at Sam's Town, jumped at the opportunity to join a weight-loss initiative that the casino's parent company, Boyd Gaming Corp., unveiled there in February 2005.
Thanks to a combination of personal coaching, healthier eating and encouragement from her co-workers, Stone has dropped 81 pounds in two years.
"I knew that it would be good for my overall health to lose weight," Stone said. "When a weight-loss program became available to us, I said, 'Why not take advantage of it?'"
Stone and Boyd Gaming are part of a workplace movement toward weight-loss initiatives on the job, as companies look to boost productivity, rein in absenteeism and keep a lid on rising health-insurance costs.
The Wellness Councils of America, a Nebraska trade group that promotes health in the workplace, has promoted office-based weight management for nearly a decade, but only in the last year or so have companies eagerly embraced the idea, council President David Hunnicutt said. Half a decade ago, virtually no business had a formal program to help employees shed pounds. Today, about 10 percent of American companies have intensive, ongoing weight-loss programs, Hunnicutt said, and as many as 80 percent of businesses hold occasional activities to raise awareness of healthier lifestyles.
It's a sorely needed message.
The American Obesity Association reports that 64.5 percent of U.S. adults over 20 are overweight or obese. The extra weight most Americans are carrying makes them more vulnerable to diseases including arthritis, breast and colon cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney failure, stroke and even urinary incontinence. The association's research found that obesity is responsible for 32 percent of the cost spent treating arthritis in the United States every year, as well as 21 percent of the cost to treat breast cancer, 30 percent of the cost to treat heart disease and 43 percent of the cost to treat adult-onset diabetes.
Because businesses pick up the tab for most ill Americans, employers are paying a steep price for the nation's obesity epidemic.
The U.S. surgeon general estimated that obesity cost the American economy $117 billion in 2000. Obesity consumed 12 percent of the country's health care budget in 1999, according to the World Bank's most recent numbers. And a report from the National Business Group on Health found that employers in 2006 sustained $8 billion in added insurance costs, $2.4 billion in sick leave, $1.8 billion in higher life-insurance expenses and $1 billion extra in disability payments as a result of obesity. Employees lost 39 million days on the job. They also had 239 million days of restricted activity at work, and scheduled 63 million visits to the doctor.
"Employers realize these health issues are significant in terms of mortality, and they're the ones paying the cost for health care," Hunnicutt said. "They realize being overweight and sedentary has profound implications in terms of health-care consumption. That's why employers are really moving into this arena in a big way."
Cutting health-care costs and reducing sick days is the objective behind Boyd Gaming's weight-loss initiative, company spokesman Rob Stillwell said.
The possibility of dropping weight through work came up time and again in conversations with employees, Stillwell said, so in August 2004, the company rolled out a pilot program at its corporate headquarters.
That initial effort has since spread to Boyd's 16 properties nationwide, with 1,500 to 2,000 employees joining. Workers at Boyd's corporate headquarters have lost about 2,000 pounds, while employees inside Boyd's downtown casinos have dropped nearly 1,200 pounds. Staffers at the Par-A-Dice casino in East Peoria, Ill., are 1,800 pounds lighter thanks to the initiative, and Stone and her colleagues at Sam's Town have lost 3,600 pounds.
Boyd's plan is simple: Employees enroll in 10-week sessions and go for weekly weigh-ins. They have motivational and informational meetings with a wellness coach, and participants get together to swap recipes and share tips. Boyd collects a $120 check from each worker who signs up; at the end of 10 weeks, employees who have cut at least five pounds and attended eight out of 10 meetings get their checks back. The checks of workers who don't make it through the program go into Boyd's wellness fund to help pay for the initiative.
The city of Las Vegas is financing its weight-loss initiative with a portion of the $2.3 million it saved when it switched its insurance coverage to a consumer-driven policy that requires insureds to pay for more of their health-care costs directly.
The city has three wellness coaches on-site daily, circulating through offices to offer encouragement, hand out fruit, perform blood-pressure checks and talk about exercise. City employees lost more than 2,000 pounds in the fall as part of a 12-week weight-loss contest, and an additional 2,300 pounds in a similar challenge this spring. The cost for the wellness program, coaches and all, is $225,000 a year, said Victoria Robinson, manager of insurance services for the city of Las Vegas.
If that sounds like a major investment, consider that the expense is less than 1 percent of the city's annual health-care spending, Robinson said. It's also roughly the same cost as bypass surgery for one worker.
"If we're going to spend money on health care, then we need to spend money on the front end to keep our employees well," Robinson said.
The program is also paying dividends in improved esprit de corps among workers. Robinson fields daily e-mails from employees praising the program.
"They understand we do care about them as individuals," Robinson said. "We are putting money and resources where our mouth is, helping them to never have to face catastrophic illness. We never counted on improved morale, but we believe morale is much higher because of this program."
For Southwest Gas Corp., an interest in fostering good will among employees led to the utility's first weight-loss initiative in 2006. The company has spent nearly $65,000 on incentives such as gift cards for employees who drop a few sizes. More than 1,000 employees lost 13,000 pounds.
"There's something to be said in this tight labor market for treating your people right," said Scott Haverlock, senior manager of human resources for Southwest Gas. "And keeping people on the healthier end of the spectrum is going to pay off in productivity and less-expensive health plans."
Businesses can expect to spend anywhere from $15 to $125 per employee per year to maintain a wellness program, Hunnicutt said. The lower cost will buy regular newsletters, brochures, a walking plan and an Internet program focused on weight management. Pricier options come with coaches and more-intensive intervention with individual workers. Wellness initiatives can return anywhere from $3 to $16 in insurance savings, productivity gains and absenteeism declines per $1 spent, Hunnicutt said.
Gene McGuire, chief marketing officer for Wellness Coaches USA of Pennsylvania, said the plan the company designed for the city of Las Vegas costs $60 to $96 per employee per year.
But obesity drives at least $2,500 a year in incremental health spending per worker, McGuire said. Diabetes piles on $10,000 in additional annual costs, and physical inactivity tacks on $500. The incidence of diabetes in the general population is 9 percent; for a 1,000-employee company, 90 people on average will have the disease. That translates into an additional $900,000 in health expenses annually, McGuire said.
Representatives of local businesses and municipalities say it's too early to tabulate the return on investment their wellness programs have yielded. But they said they expect to see results in the long term.
Robinson said city employees will likely suffer fewer heart attacks and cancers in coming years.
Added Stillwell: "There is some expense involved, but at the end of the day, the cost to our company is more than made up in our employees' work product and the health, attitude and morale of the individuals who are participating."
Linda Stone will vouch for the health and attitude gains that come from Boyd's weight-management plan.
Stone just signed up for another 10-week go-round, and she'd like to take off another 20 pounds. When she reaches her 101-pound weight-loss goal, Stone will aim for lifetime status, weighing in once a month and keeping within two pounds of her target weight.
"It's changed my life in a very positive way," Stone said. "It's become a way of life for me. I eat totally differently. I feel better and I feel like I look better. It helps your confidence. And I want to finish the program. When you set a goal, you want to meet it."
Tips for running a wellness initiative
-- Gauge employee interest. David Hunnicutt, president of the Wellness Councils of America, advises companies, before they invest in a wellness program, to send out a simple survey that will measure how useful their workers might find such an initiative.
-- Consider your work force's health. For $5 to $15 an employee, Hunnicutt said, companies can get a health-risk assessment that will tell them how well their staffers are before any programs begin. A business with a younger, more active work force will need to offer a more challenging plan, while a company whose workers are older and more sedentary should find a basic, entry-level program.
-- Make sure the plan is safe. The plan you offer to your workers shouldn't result in more than one to two pounds of weight loss a week, Hunnicutt said. Be especially cautious with short-term weight-loss contests that encourage crash dieting.
-- Include all employees. Implement a program that goes beyond incentives for people who lose weight, and provide some rewards for workers who have avoided becoming overweight in the first place, suggested John Harris, senior vice president of Harris HealthTrends, an Ohio consulting firm that helps companies lower their health-care costs. Offer goodies to staffers who either lost pounds or maintained a healthy weight. And have alternative physical activities for workers who can't walk, added Gene McGuire, chief marketing officer for Wellness Coaches USA in Pennsylvania. Companies can face legal implications for singling workers out or basing bonuses on weight loss or health.
-- Communicate with your workers. Your company's wellness program is vying for employees' attention along with a barrage of fast-food advertisements pushing juicy, greasy hamburgers and French fries. Even the best program requires a "monumental communication effort" to get people to join, Harris said. Make your communication efforts multimedia: Some staffers will respond well to phone-based coaching, while others will prefer online methods.
-- Protect confidentiality. Some workers avoid weight-loss programs on the job, Harris said, because they're concerned about their personal information being shared with supervisors. Ensure employees that their wellness information will remain private.
-- Build a healthy corporate culture. A companywide commitment to better health is important, starting with entry-level workers and moving up to senior executives. Support for wellness among high-level managers is especially important, Harris said. Consider a "culture audit" that would assess the health and wellness atmosphere at your business and identify possible areas for improvement. Such an audit might cost $5,000 to $15,000, Harris estimated.
-- Emphasize maintenance. Weight loss is pointless if it's a one-time effort. Focus on developing an initiative that will encourage lifelong changes in eating and exercising habits.
-- Make it fun. "Sometimes, when people bring up weight loss, there's almost a boot camp-type mentality," Hunnicutt said. "If it's not fun, people won't do it." Offer on-site cooking classes and nutritionist-led field trips to grocery stores and fast-food restaurants.
-- Focus less on results. Consider doling out i
ncentives based on actions -- for example, walking three times a week for eight weeks -- rather than specific weight-loss goals.
