To an outsider looking in, Dorothy Spence was enjoying a high level of both professional and personal success in the mid- to late 1990s. In 1994 she had co-launched TecKnowledge Healthcare Systems, a Halifax-based telehealth company with 42 full-time employees and an office in Edmonton. Already a professional engineer, in 1995 she got her executive MBA from Halifax-based Saint Mary’s University. Plus, she was a wife and the mother of two children. She should have been on top of the world, but in fact the opposite was true.

 

“I was miserable,” says Spence, now 47. “I was on the road 70% of the time; I was obese and completely burnt out. I knew if I continued on that professional path, my health was going to give.” At that time Spence’s lifestyle consisted of sitting on planes, sitting in meetings, and having dinners of hotel room service with wine during the week, then collapsing from exhaustion at home on the weekends before starting the cycle over again.

 

The tipping point came in 2000, when Spence visited a plus-size clothing store to buy a business suit. “I remember looking at myself in the mirror and noticing the poor-quality fabric of the suit and my puffy face and bloodshot eyes, and thinking that I had to make some changes.” Her work-life transformation began in 2001, when she sold TecKnowledge and then formed Growth Matters, a consulting company through which she provides coaching to business leaders. “I help people take a step back from the day-to-day [grind],” she says. “Most people don’t need to completely transform, they just need to tweak routines and habits. Using one hour of the day differently can create a profound change in someone’s health and vitality.”

 

 

In 2005 Spence took her first yoga class. “I fell in love with it from my first downward-facing dog,” she says. As she advanced in her yoga practice and began making better nutritional choices, the 60 extra pounds she was carrying soon melted away.

 

After becoming a certified yoga teacher in 2007, in April of 2009 Spence opened 108 Yoga, a studio offering classes to the public and wellness sessions to businesses, in Halifax’s Brewery Market. One of her services is called 108 at Work, in which she visits workplaces to teach proper posture to employees with desk jobs along with breathing techniques to help them relieve stress.

 

Although Spence earns less than she did as a CEO, she’s healthier and happier. “I don’t travel for work anymore, I do yoga before I leave home in the morning, I eat better, and I’m a calmer boss,” she says. “I’ve learned that the more that business leaders value health personally, the more likely they are to implement some form of wellness in their workplace.”

 

Surveys indicate that high numbers of Atlantic Canadians are less healthy than they should be in spite of company wellness programs (see box, below). Why? Because it’s counterproductive to offer gym memberships to employees who don’t use them because they’d rather have on-site yoga classes or one paid personal day off work each month.

 

“When I work with companies I don’t ask employers what their staff wants, I anonymously survey the employees,” says Shauna Oakie, the 53-year-old president and owner of Charlottetown-based Innovative HealthwoRx, which has been offering workplace wellness programs to Prince Edward Island companies since 2005. Yet even when businesses do hit the mark, not all employees buy in. “You will never have 100% employee participation in workplace wellness programs,” says Oakie. “There will always be some naysayers who don’t want to be involved.”

 

Mike Wahl, the 31-year-old co-owner of Definitions Fitness Company in St. John’s, disagrees. “If you don’t pressure people and you give multiple points of entry into leading a healthier and safer lifestyle at work and home, then everyone can be part of it,” he says. The former strength coach for Memorial University athletics, Wahl opened Definitions in 2003 initially as a personal-training facility that catered mostly to executives. Soon those clients were asking Wahl and his business partner, Mike O’Neil, now 39, if they could help improve the health of their employees too.

 

“We had no benchmark for filling that niche, so we created our own,” says Wahl, referring to Definitions’ Corporate Power-Living health-and-safety program. “Then our offshore clients asked us if we could go offshore, and we said sure, why not?” Wahl and O’Neil began sending their team of coaches to teach welders and mechanics on oil rigs, supply vessels, and tankers how to stay fit, eat properly, and avoid injury.

 

“This is an aging male population working 12-hour days on 21-day rotations,” says Wahl. As a result of not exercising and making poor nutritional choices, many of them end up with diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Then there are the safety issues, which is a huge component of employee health. If one of them ends up hurting himself and has to go on disability, the company has to find a last-minute replacement at top dollar. “A company can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars this way,” says Wahl. “Our definition of wellness isn’t about getting rock-hard abs; it’s about people not having a heart attack on an oil rig or tanker in the middle of nowhere or not having them not be able to lift their kid because they’re injured.”

 

There’s a misconception that employers can’t afford to offer health-based initiatives. In fact, the experts insist they can’t afford not to: workplace stress and stress-related illnesses cost the Canadian economy about $5 billion a year. “Workplace wellness programs have proven to provide a return on investment of between $3 to $6 for every $1 invested,” says Oakie (for more reasons to toe the healthy-workplace line, see “Can you afford not to?,” page 67). In January Oakie’s company held a flu-shot clinic at the factory of Charlottetown-based cookware giant Paderno. “A few years ago Paderno had several staff out sick with the flu, and as a result productivity dropped significantly,” says Oakie. “Ever since then, Paderno has hired us to immunize its employees on-site.”

 

It’s important for business owners to realize they don’t need to be a large organization to implement workplace wellness. “You can put something in place even if you only have a few employees,” says Moira Gagnon, the director of health promotion at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of New Brunswick, which administers an annual Wellness at Heart Award recognizing provincial workplace wellness leaders. (Past award recipients include McCain Foods (Canada), Irving Oil and J.D. Irving, Castle Rock Construction Services, Barry Spalding Lawyers, and Crosby Molasses Company.)

 

Regardless of a company’s size, it’s the current and future employees who will drive the demand for healthy workplaces. “The younger generation is much more conscious of work-life balance,” says Gagnon. “They’re looking for employers who will give them the flexibility to fit physical activity into their workday, who offer healthier food choices at meetings, and who aren’t opposed to them working from home occasionally. Psychological wellness is very important, because a happy workforce tends to be a healthier one. These initiatives not only attract good employees but also help retain them.”

 

Today 108 Yoga’s Dorothy Spence believes she has the best of both worlds: good health and rewarding work. “I married my passion with my profession,” she says. “I’m still a business owner, but now I call myself a ‘spiritual entrepreneur’ because I’m earning my living in a field that feeds my spirit. And although I still have to pay my bills and staff, money doesn’t have the same power and control it used to.”