By CRAIG FREILICH

A St. Lawrence County organization has developed an innovative program to help small businesses encourage their employees to adopt healthier habits at work and at home.

WorkWell Investments offers a highly customizable set of workplace wellness options for businesses and their workers at the worksite.

It is operated by the Health Initiative, originally a collaboration by Canton-Potsdam Hospital and Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center that has been working to improve the health of St. Lawrence County residents for more than a decade.

Any region’s health care management plan will include common sense ways to prevent disease.

One way to reach people with healthy ideas for them is at their workplaces, and if employers can be recruited to take part in improving workers’ health, a good part of a person’s day can be directed toward healthier practices related to exercises, diet, stress and other factors.

One of the benefits of working with the staff of WorkWell Investments is that they are well trained in workplace wellness program development, “so we’re happy to talk to any organization up here,” said Anne Marie Snell, chief operating officer.

WorkWell became a “breakaway fee-for-service program” about four years ago, she said.

“We offer businesses a well-rounded program to become a more ‘well’ organization. We have developed a small business model with support from the state Department of Health. It was the only grant-funded program aimed at a healthy small-business project,” Snell said.

“Our thought was to provide some state-of-the-art services to smaller organizations,” she said.

But no business is going to pay for a program that doesn’t hold some promise of return on investment.

Such a return on workplace wellness programs is well documented. On their web site, for instance, WorkWell refers to a Harvard Business Review article that points to Johnson & Johnson’s experience, where they determined that every dollar spent on workplace wellness returned $2.71.

Fee Charged

“There has been some grant money for workplace wellness programs, but businesses wanted services that wouldn’t fit into the grant funding pool, so we developed a service we offer for a fee,” Snell said.

A workplace doesn’t have to have the resources of a company like Google to improve employees’ health and well-being.

A typical program of Snell's might be a one-hour presentation and discussion at the workplace every two weeks for a year. For 20 employees at a firm in Ogdensburg, that would cost the firm about $3,000.

Add on a seven-week incentive program with participation by the company in physical or emotional wellness challenges, for instance, that Snell and her team would lead in two site visits, and that would be about $1,500 more.

The cost to an employer is dependent on several factors, such as the number of employees and the number of hours they are willing to devote to the program.

Transportation costs, staff time, cost of materials, and other variables such as whether it is just a straight education program or it includes screenings with blood tests, all will affect the price.

“It’s very competitively priced. We commit to make it as low-cost as possible,” Snell said.

“We’re not trying to make money,” Snell said, “but trying to make a service available when grants aren’t."

Meanwhile, there are indirect benefits to an employer that accrue from a healthier workforce, such as higher productivity and fewer sick days.

The WorkWell Investments program of health risk assessments and practical steps people can take to improve their lives has been put to work in a number of local companies and organizations.

They include Clarkson University, Town of Waddington, Potters Industries, Mosaic, North Country Savings Bank, Potsdam Specialty Paper, Credo Community Center, Brookfield Renewable Power, Blevins Auto Group, Potsdam Food Co-op, Hoose, Knight and Associates, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, Mapleview Dairy, St. Lawrence County, Town of Madrid, Madrid-Waddington Central School District, Potsdam Building Blocks Day Care, Canton-Potsdam Hospital, RiverLedge Health Care and Rehabilitation Center, St. Josephs Nursing Home, Maplewood Health Care and Rehabilitation Center, SUNY Potsdam, and St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

As they developed their approach to different users, Snell said, “we tailored the program. The services were not all the same, but the educational program was. And they used different incentive programs,” Snell said.

Developing the program

As they worked to build the program, “we pulled together nine small businesses and organizations – a dairy farm, a bank, an auto body shop and two towns -- and as a group we worked together to try and prove return on investment and use of economies if scale.”

The dairy farm provides an example of how they tailored their programs.

“We did an internal audit of what employees wanted to see. We found out that they didn’t bring their lunches because the environment was not right.

"There wasn’t a place they felt they could eat there that was appropriate,” she said, so lunch for them became hit-or-miss.

“So we got a sink in an outside room, and a boot rack, and made a better environment. But that wouldn’t be something a day care needed, for instance,” so attention had to be paid to each organization’s specific needs.

Snell said they found one-day events with things such as biometric screenings worked for some while they devised more comprehensive programs for others.

Among the things WorkWell decided on is to discourage unhealthy options such as vending machines that dispense all those things that might taste good but that we know don’t do us much good.

“We really try to develop a culture and environment that supports better, not unhealthy, options, making changes to improve health.”

They might provide “well coaches” to speak with people one-on-one, in person or on the phone, to have frank discussions about what can work for them.

“We will help them develop their own goals. It’s easy to wag a finger, but a coach can really help a person find out what they want to accomplish and help them set goals.”

Snell’s programs can also provide materials that illustrate points they want to make.

“We can put information where people will really read it --not on a crowded office bulletin board, but maybe in a bathroom stall where you’ll get the reader’s attention.”

The Wellness Council of America suggests 10 steps for implementing a results-oriented program, which WorkWell Investments uses:

• capture senior management support

• designate a wellness champion

• conduct an employee interest survey

• provide an opportunity for health screening

• administer an annual physical activity campaign

• hold healthy eating lunch and learns

• establish an in-house wellness library

• disseminate a quarterly health newsletter

• implement wellness policies and procedures

• support community health efforts.

Incentives designed to help

Incentives for employees can help keep them on track, but Snell says they don’t offer incentives themselves. That, she says, is the responsibility of the employer.

“However we do offer guidance for what employers can do, depending on the scale of their program. Incentives are a hot topic in the world, as they can be tricky legally. A business needs to ensure that every employee has an equal opportunity to earn these incentives.”

Snell lists a few examples of incentives that can be offered, ranked from lowest cost to highest:

• recognition such as in newsletters, or verbally

• a prime parking spot

• flex time

• company merchandise

• cash

• gift cards

• gym membership

• additional paid time off

• a reduction in health insurance premiums.

WorkWell Investments has also started offering for sale machines such as workstation treadmills and adjustable “sit-stand” workstations. “For the price of a new desk, it’s something people should think about. Most of the 14 employees at the Health Initiative have some form of alternative workstations.”

More information is available at http://workwellinvestments.com/ and at 261-4760 ext. 222