Safety and wellness programs for the workplace are good for your people and the bottom line. Hint: try making it fun!

At J.D. Irving Ltd.’s sawmill operation just outside Truro, N.S., great big flatbed trucks loaded with stripped-down tree trunks fresh from woodlots rumble past piled-up timber and into the receiving yard. Drivers wave cheerfully at co-workers in the yard, all of them wearing hard hats, bright orange-and-yellow vests, and protective goggles. A nearby crane operator manoeuvres a load of tree trunks onto a conveyor belt that hauls wood up and into the sawmill itself, where it will be cut and trucked out again. 

Safety is a high priority—as of June 21, there hadn’t been an accident in a record 627 days—but so is health. Most of the 150 people at the mill participate in the voluntary J.D. Irving wellness program. Trevor Bent, the HR and safety manager, says they have had good results so far: people are more active; and many employees and their family members have made significant changes in their lifestyle choices, resulting in weight loss, decreases in blood pressure, and lower cholesterol levels. The program has generally given them an improved sense of health and well-being. “We’ve had two cases here where people have gone to their doctors immediately after screening raised red flags,” says Bent. 

Red flags are up across the Atlantic provinces: rates of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, smoking, anxiety, stress, and depression are high and climbing. It costs businesses dearly, not only in terms of increased claims cost but, more importantly, in not having their valued employees at work. Disability and health care costs are rising, along with the rate of absenteeism and presenteeism (when an employee is at work but not working productively). Since disability rises with age, some of these costs are due to an aging workforce. High prescription costs don’t help either. While organizations have no control over age and drug prices, they can try to manage the other costs through wellness programs that educate people and help them change behaviours. 

The federal government saw the warning signs years ago; it promotes a program called HealthWorks that began in January of 2003 when Health Canada joined forces with the National Quality Institute (NQI) and health-and-safety specialists to establish criteria for a healthy workplace. To help work out what a sustainable model might look like, Health Canada asked the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia to pilot the HealthWorks project. Atlantic Canadian companies such as Secunda International Ltd. (formerly Secunda Marine), Rideau Construction, and design firm Trampoline (formerly Page and Wood) participated, each assessing employee health and testing programs. The pilot projects went well, says NQI’s Atlantic executive, Mary Lou MacDonald, and Health Canada continues to develop HealthWorks. 

The HealthWorks model has become the gold standard for workplace wellness. It has three facets: occupational health and safety; individual health behaviours; and cultural and organizational health. Occupational health and safety can mean improving the ergonomics of workstations or providing CPR training. Improving individual health behaviours means persuading people to lose weight, quit smoking, and start exercising, and it’s where most organizations engaged in workplace wellness focus their time. The culture component refers to creating an environment in which people can flourish.

The NQI approach to a healthy workplace is first, build commitment from leadership; second, assess needs; third, implement programs; and fourth, measure results and ensure sustainability. NQI members include Delta Hotels, the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Public Service Commission of Nova Scotia. While J.D. Irving, Secunda International, and Cianbro aren’t NQI members, their approach is similar, perhaps because that’s just what works. 

The first step in lowering health care costs and improving employee health is convincing people that it’s worthwhile to try, which begins at the top. While some leaders are motivated by a belief in good health, as is the case with Secunda International’s Fred Smithers, most executives must be persuaded by the business case. In 2001 Cianbro, a heavy-construction company in Pittsfield, Maine, with more than 2,000 people on the payroll, paid out $11.5 million (U.S.) in total health care costs; the company’s medical director, Dr. Larry Catlett, projected that those costs would double within three years. That’s when president Peter Vigue asked the HR department to create a wellness program. The motivation was similar at J.D. Irving. “We realized that if we did nothing,” says HR manager Mary Martell, “health care costs would rise 10% to 15% per year.” 

With management support, the really hard work of helping people change can begin. Some organizations form a wellness committee to spearhead their efforts, with representation from all levels. The idea is that if employees have a say in what’s happening to them, they’ll be more likely to co-operate. Surveys identify programs and services people want to see and the kinds of incentives that might prove useful. The committee might also be involved in analyzing data from a health-risk assessment and other sources to identify which risk factors need to be targeted in their organization with interventions, programs, and initiatives.  

When J.D. Irving does an assessment, for example, a nurse sees everyone individually, entering data directly into each person’s file. Confidentiality is respected; the nurse logs into the wellness provider’s website. The employee enters his or her secure PIN while the nurse is turned away so that all results remain confidential. The nurse measures blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood-sugar levels, as well as taking hip and waist measurements to calculate body mass index. Employees fill in the rest of the online survey, responding to questions about their health practices such as smoking habits, alcohol consumption, family medical history, how they cope with stress, levels of physical activity, and eating habits. The employee receives a personal, confidential report with his or her health score, and if any risk factors are identified, the nurse is available to discuss possible strategies and recommendations to address them. 

Management receives an aggregate report, with the total health scores merged and graphed into trend reports. The report indicates the percentage of people with risk levels of one to five (one is low risk and five is high risk). The information from the aggregate report helps the company’s wellness committee decide which risk factors to target with their programs and resources. The objective is, over time, to help as many people as possible out of the high-risk expensive category and into the low-risk, less-expensive group. 

So how can a company do that? Every organization is different, and divisions and departments within them may differ as well, which means there is no cookie-cutter solution. It’s trial and error, as Secunda International knows only too well. The Dartmouth, N.S.–based company, which supplies vessels for the offshore industry, is now seven years into its wellness program. An early nutrition and smoking-cessation program was not successful. 

“We couldn’t support it,” says Steve Widmeyer, the company’s HR manager, “because no one in the company had the knowledge or expertise to answer employees’ questions.” Shipshape at Secunda International, its new program, is gently easing people toward eating better, exercising more, and smoking less. The transition has had to be gentle because of crew lash back, with nutrition at least; people are onboard ship for 28 days straight. “All they had to look forward to was fries and burgers,” says Widmeyer, “and then they had none.” Crew members were not pleased. To avoid a mutiny, the cooks decided to offer salad as well as fries rather than taking fries off the menu altogether. 

A 2006 Nova Scotia Public Service Commission (NSPSC) work/life balance initiative was called Take Back the Lunch Break. Borrowed from the University of Toronto, it asked people who would normally work through lunch—and suffer from sluggishness, stress, and lack of productivity by mid-afternoon—to take three lunch breaks a week. As with U of T, one of the main reasons Nova Scotia’s public servants had stopped taking lunch was because their supervisors weren’t either. The NSPSC sent postcards around that people pinned up in their cubicles encouraging them to take a break. “That seemed to give people the permission they needed,” says Joan Parks-Hubley, the NSPSC’s healthy workplace co-ordinator, “especially when managers took a break too.” 

Since 2004 Delta Beauséjour employees have been doing five-minute morning stretches at 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., led by the housekeeping assistant supervisor or by Ron Comeau, the HR manager. “I love doing the stretches,” he says. “I used to just get up, grab a coffee, and come to work all blah. But now there is fun, music, and lots of laughs.” 

The Delta Beauséjour’s stretching program, which has reduced the number of reported back injuries, may be successful because of a very human factor: everyone is treated equally. Comeau may be a manager, but having him twist, stretch, and pull in front of everyone, while urging others on, demonstrates to staff that he cares about their well-being. 

If people aren’t interested in participating in a program, it won’t last long, which is a good reason to offer a variety. For example, the Delta Beauséjour also runs a Biggest Loser event, to see which teams of three people can lose the most weight over 10 weeks. Last year 30 people lost a combined total of 461 pounds. The hotel will also be running a Biggest Quitter event this year, to support people who are trying to stop smoking.

None of this works without accountability. Tim Kelly, the owner and president of Work Place Health Outcomes Inc., calls himself an accountability coach; he helps people develop their own health plans. “One fellow who was 40 pounds overweight decided to stop eating at night and to walk more,” says Kelly. “He was about to add more ideas to the list when I stopped him. I said, ‘Why don’t you start with just those two things?’ ”  

The employee was able to lose the weight by increasing his activity three-fold (he wore a pedometer) and by not eating after 7 p.m.—and by being accountable to someone.

Cianbro has found the same thing. Medical director Catlett hires health educators to do one-on-one coaching with Cianbro employees. “Face to face is what works,” says Rita Bubar, the company’s corporate HR manager. “It encourages compliance. If nobody is checking on your progress, you won’t do anything.” 

Whatever programs and services organizations offer employees, outcomes must be measured. At J.D. Irving, employee health is built into each manager’s “scorecard,” which indicates how well the manager has done in the past six months. Sixty-eight per cent of employees participated in initiatives in 2005, for a total weight loss of 5,000 pounds. People generally reported feeling better overall, with 120 learning how to lower their blood pressure, 96 lowering cholesterol, and 85 reducing blood-sugar levels. 

Lower risk factors led to reduced health costs, lower absenteeism and presenteeism, and greater productivity. The return on investment for wellness programs has been estimated at $3 for every $1 invested. The benefits may reach much further into society than employees; families benefit when organizations involve spouses and children too. “Good employee health and wellness is good business,” says Martell. “It’s an investment that delivers tangible and long-term results in both productivity and quality of life. It’s a win-win for any employer.”