Vicki Garza fit that stereotype. When the director of
finance and mother of two reached the mid-day slump,
she would grab at least one 20-ounce bottle of pop,
along with potato chips, a granola bar or crackers —
all laden with sugar. Sometimes she’d enjoy coffee with generous amount of cream and chocolate syrup. Whatever the tactic,
the result was the same: She’d return to the tired and sluggish
feeling that she desperately wanted to escape. That was until
she joined a 12-week wellness program early this year. She lost
14 pounds, a whole pant size and feels healthier.
“Now around 3 p.m., when most people are normally struggling, I feel fine at work and later when I’m home I feel better
dealing with the kids, dinner and the house,” Garza says. “I’m
not dragging.”
Garza’s success was contagious. Her colleagues at Bostrom
Corp. began noticing her transformation and she was happy to
reveal the reason behind the difference. It sparked the idea for
the Chicago-based association management company to establish a pilot wellness initiative in March, in which employees —
including Garza — lost body fat and inches while gaining knowledge about healthy lifestyles. Results from the pilot program,
using the Transitions Lifestyle System, were deemed so successful that company officials decided in June to offer wellness
program options to all 55 employees to ultimately build a better work environment.
“Most people, including me, were in the [pilot] program to lose
weight,” Garza says. “But we were pleasantly surprised to learn
how to change our lifestyles — how to eat better, live better
and make better choices than in the past. It was a great bonus.”
Cutting Weight, Cutting Costs
With health costs rising, employee weight is on many employers’ minds. According to an April 2008 report by The Conference Board, obese employees cost U.S. private businesses
about $45 billion annually in medical expenses and absenteeism — more than smoking or alcoholism. Obese workers
file more workers’ compensation claims for injuries on the job
and more frequently become disabled compared with non-obese workers, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Truls Ostbye, MD, and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina studied nearly 12,000 health care
and university employees who completed at least one health
risk assessment questionnaire from 1997 to 2004. During three
years of follow up, workers with higher body mass indexes filed
more workers compensation claims. People with BMIs of 40 or
more had twice the rate of claims as people at recommended
weights — especially claims related to back, wrist, arm, neck,
shoulder, knee, foot or hip injuries. Also, the number of lost workdays was almost 13 times higher, medical claims costs were
seven times higher and indemnity claims were 11 times higher
among the heaviest employees compared with those of recommended weight.
BOSTROM’S MISSION
To build successful organizations and enhance value for
clients through trust, experience, personalized service and
solutions.
ABOUT BOSTROM
Bostrom is one of the oldest association management
companies in the country, providing management, consulting and outsourcing services to professional societies,
trade associations and charitable organizations for more
than 75 years. Its focus is helping clients satisfy their
members and meet their missions through Bostrom’s
accounting, conference management and technology
among others services. Bostrom is headquartered in
Chicago and maintains a Washington, D.C., office, employing a total of 55 professionals. Visit www.bostrom.com.
And this is no small problem. About two-thirds of Americans
are overweight (a BMI of 25 to 30) or obese (a BMI more than
30). BMI is calculated as weight in pounds divided by height
in inches squared. For example, a 5-foot 5-inch tall person is
obese at 180 pounds and morbidly obese at 240 pounds.
Like Bostrom, many employers are responding to the nation’s
obesity epidemic by encouraging healthy choices through wellness programs — helping people lose weight, cut back on diabetes risk and on cardiovascular problems. The Conference
Board reports that 40 percent of companies have implemented
obesity reduction programs, with another 24 percent to adopt
them this year.
The advantage of organizations forming wellness programs
vs. employees joining them on their own is the sense of camaraderie and commitment that it creates.
“There was a huge benefit to having a support system at work
and great team building for encouraging people who don’t normally work together to interact,” says Jeanne Sheehy, Bostrom’s
vice president and chief marketing officer. “I could not have gotten focused on my health and stress management without that
team. And since we spend most of our time at work, it’s convenient for people to get access to a program at work.”
John Dee, Bostrom’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, adds: “Healthier employees should have fewer
medical claims, which should help keep our medical insurance
premiums down. In addition, we felt that having a company-sponsored program made up of employee teams would help
improve the culture and camaraderie among our staff. Happy
and healthy employees are usually productive employees.”
It’s a Lifestyle, Not a Diet
Many Bostrom employees already had tried Weight Watchers,
Jenny Craig and the like, but wanted a system that was more
than a diet — they wanted a wellness program, and Transitions
was selected because it offers a “higher-level approach,”
Sheehy says.
“The more Vicki described the program, the more we
thought it wasn’t a diet but an education about an entirely new
approach to healthy living,” she adds. “With this program, certified Transitions coaches are trained to implement an educational system where they hold weekly meetings that teach the
participants how to read food labels and decipher good and bad
fats and carbs.”
Sheehy met with Dee and Michael Chan, Bostrom’s director
of human resources and operations, to discuss establishing a
pilot wellness program — not for weight loss, although that was
