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Well the first experience I probably had with a wellness program was probably an accidental
one. I was working in a retail store and my manager was a surfer. And I was just a kid.
I was 17 or 18 and I'd surfed a little bit and was sort of getting into it. And he pretty
much promised that if I'd jump through a couple of hoops that he'd take me out surfing.
But he was sort of trash talking me going, "You wouldn't be able to do it anyway.
You wouldn't be able to handle the surf and you'd never be able to do that particular
task in the workplace anyway. We were just trash talking, but I was really keen to deliver
on a couple of things that he'd suggested that people weren't doing, and I just sort
of -- I can do it. I can do it for sure.
And sure enough I did, and we went surfing, and I learned a lot from him. We had a whole
lot of fun and it was probably the first time I had an incentive put in front of me. But
it was health driven. Like it sort of -- much of it changes your life, doesn't it? Like
when you get introduced to something like that.
Then I look at one of my friends that -- he's a pretty big guy and he's actually started
to trim down, and the reason he's trimmed down is because a whole lot of people at work.
They're all doing the same diet and it's not even really much of a diet. They're
just deliberately eating healthy for the next three months.
Now, as a performance advisor, I know that you'd want to have more than a three-month
plan, but nonetheless, what he's involved in is a healthy environment where they'll
feel like they're bonded; they're all together; they all feel like a team. Like
that they're feeling physically healthy in it, but it's because of the workplace.
And I think that's the way most people -- they sort of miss the boat with incentives sometimes.
I think it's got to be a financial incentive and the research is that financial incentives
really -- they really only drive small parts of populations. People want their life to
be richer; they want more going on. And they've got problems that they want to have solved.
When you start to look at health and well-being, and you create those as incentives, you're
actually helping someone's life a bit differently. Like the idea that somebody could have -- this
sounds crazy, but a yoga session at work for an hour -- well, that's way cheaper than
giving somebody a -- like if somebody went to a yoga class, what's it going to cost
them? Like 15, 30 bucks worse case. Maybe it cost you maybe 150 bucks; worst case; worst
case; their time plus the person coming in. If you gave someone an extra 150 bucks a month,
they still probably wouldn't even think that was a good deal. If you gave someone
a $150 voucher, it would be alright.
But it you start to actually go, "You know, we're going to liberate your life," and
you plan on it. You change a person's life. So really the wellness program and health
and well-being can be used as an incentive model, and it's got a powerful kind of impact
into people's lives and how they talk about the company and the attachment that they have
to the company.
I think sometimes we just look at the return on which one's have the fewest sick days.
So we just do this to please everyone. Everyone seems to be grumpy so we'll just throw this
in. But when you look at it over a long period of time and have a good plan, you really impact
people's lives and impact the business, and it costs less.