Prescriptions offered for workplace wellness

HEALTHY CONSUMERS: Hasbro employees, from left, Fran Wells, Amanda Deaner and Lauren Colbath, take advantage of the weekly farmers market at the company's Pawtucket headquarters. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
HEALTHY CONSUMERS: Hasbro employees, from left, Fran Wells, Amanda Deaner and Lauren Colbath, take advantage of the weekly farmers market at the company's Pawtucket headquarters. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

“Healthier employees are happier employees,” said Dina Pescione, a benefits manager at Amica Mutual Insurance Co. And that happiness factor, she says, has a direct correlation with the positive manner in which customer service is delivered, a key focus of what Amica sees as its competitive edge in insurance.
Wellness has been inculcated as “part of the culture at Amica,” Pescione said at an Aug. 9 awards luncheon celebrating 28 businesses, including Amica, recognized as Providence Business News’ healthiest employers in Rhode Island for 2012.
Pescione shared her insights during a panel discussion about what made the winners’ workplace-wellness programs successful. She was joined by Susan Booth, a nurse from Hasbro Inc. and a member of the company’s wellness team, Domenic Delmonico, senior vice president of managed care at Care New England, and Jennifer McKenna, the benefits administrator at Fellowship Health Resources.
Anne Marie Ludovici-Connolly, director of health, wellness and productivity at Tufts Health Plan – the presenting sponsor of the Healthiest Employers awards – also offered her advice.
Delmonico spoke about the importance of leadership and commitment from senior management, citing the example of Dennis Keefe, the president and CEO of the hospital system, who within weeks of assuming his new role, shared his own story with employees of managing his chronic condition of Type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise.
Delmonico himself walks the walk, a regular participant in a weekly yoga session. Care New England had the highest score of any company, 77 out of 100, by an independent analysis, but Delmonico said that building participation was still something that needed work.
Delmonico also freely admitted to some mistakes, learning from trial and error.
“We handed out a party pack from Showcase Cinemas as a reward, only to discover that it included popcorn and soda,” he said, with a laugh. Care New England now uses just movie tickets as an incentive, which has proven to be popular. Delmonico also described the push back from employees when the hospital system decided to eliminate fried foods on Fridays. The bottom line, according to Delmonico, is that wellness is a good business model.
Hasbro, which won in the 5,000-plus employee category, has put an emphasis on a playful approach to its wellness program, which it has branded with the name, “Imagine,” according to Booth.
The key to our success, Booth continued, was “keeping the program fresh, new and fun.” She described how Hasbro’s indoor and outdoor walking course had been decorated with images from “Candyland,” one of Hasbro’s top-selling children’s games. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, she said, also make regular visits to the company’s two fitness facilities.
Nutrition is also an important component of Hasbro’s wellness initiatives, which include a regular weekly farmers’ market and special cooking classes during lunchtime. The onsite fitness facilities have become so popular with employees, Booth said, there is a 30-minute time limit placed on use of facilities.
Fellowship Health Resources, which won in the 300-to-599 employee category, does not currently have in place metrics to fully capture or quantify the benefits of its wellness program, according to McKenna. But, she said, the returns “are real enough to see the difference. Wellness is a long-term initiative; healthy employees do better at work,” she said. Her company’s program has put a focus on helping higher-risk employees through its wellness program.
All of the participants voiced similar needs to develop a more rigorous methodology to measure outcomes, benefits and participation. For Amica’s Pescione, the company has seen a relatively flat line measuring increases in health insurance claims over the past few years. Sometimes the most compelling evidence, she continued, “is the personal story of an employee who says, ‘This program saved my life.’ ”
Ludovici-Connolly praised the panelists as “rock stars” of the wellness movement who have “taken academic theory and put it into practice.”
Dr. James Prochaska, the founder of Pro-Change Behavior Systems and director of the Cancer Prevention Research Center at the University of Rhode Island, gave the keynote address during the luncheon, putting an emphasis on the need to understand the psychology of changing behavior when addressing wellness issues in the workplace.
“The average cost of replacing a professional employee in the knowledge industry is $250,000,” he said. A company is more likely to be able to retain such an employee, he continued, by investing in wellness programs that promote an employee’s health.
Prochaska said that the No. 1 predictor of an unhealthy diet was for women with children. The biggest changes in diet will occur when the last child leaves home, he continued.
As an example of behavioral change related to weight loss, he suggested that the teenager in the home receive $5 for “every pound that the mother loses.”
Adolescents, Prochaska said, “love to parent their parents.”
Overall, the national average for wellness programs in the workplace evaluated by research-company Healthiest Employers is 54.7 percent. The company also did the analysis in Rhode Island, where the average was 55.98 percent for the 40 local applicants for Providence Business News’ inaugural Healthiest Employers award program, according to PBN Editor Mark Murphy, who moderated the panel discussion. •

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