An in-house wellness program can pay many dividends, both for the company and its employees, according to an executive for one of the nation’s largest truckload carriers. Sara Glore, Celadon’s vice president for human resources, spoke to trucking executives Wednesday, June 11, at the CCJ Spring Symposium about her company’s experiences with its “Highway 2 Health” wellness program, which was initiated to lower healthcare costs by bringing those services in-house.
Celadon has 3,500 employees, including 2,750 fleet members and 750 administrative workers. The company has four terminals and two logistics warehouses scattered across the nation, and only sees drivers during orientation. Glore said that considering the company’s size and scope, rolling out the wellness program proved daunting. “The first year, we had a clean slate,” Glore said. “We didn’t even know what we wanted to do yet.”
in January 2006, Glore organized what she called the Wellness Council, which included senior Celadon executives, a representative of the company’s benefits vendor, and the chief executive officer of the local Community Hospitals. The Wellness Council began by formulating an official mission statement: “To research, identify and recommend inventive and progressive strategies to improve the mental and physical well-being of Celadon employees and their families and control rising health costs.”
Under the guidance of the Wellness Council, Celadon hired additional staff to carry out the various elements of the “Highway 2 Health” program. The company already had a nurse practitioner and a medial assistant, and the carrier hired a full-time nurse and a wellness coordinator. The team started by conducting health-risk assessments of its employees.
These assessments revealed things that surprised and startled Glore and others: 43 percent of the company’s employees had high blood pressure, 28 percent were overweight, 41 percent were obese, 16 percent were morbidly obese, 97 percent didn’t eat enough fruits and/or vegetables daily, 46 percent didn’t exercise at all, and four people recently had thought about ending their life. Also, 47 percent lacked a provider they regularly visited, 62 percent said they didn’t seek health care because they were working, and 54 percent did not seek health care because they had to make a delivery.
The “Highway 2 Health” program offered a number of wellness initiatives, including health fairs, personal wellness coaching, diabetes counseling, employee education “brown bag lunch” sessions and even ensuring that the headquarters cafeteria carried healthy alternatives.
In January 2007, Celadon offered Weight Watchers to its administrative group. Fifty-three of the 350 employees signed up – from technicians to vice presidents. And the mix of men and women was about even, which surprised Glore. The deal was if the employee lost 5 percent of his body weight, he would get his $140 fee refunded. But even those who made an effort had some incentive. If a worker attended at least 10 of the 12 sessions, he would receive half the registration fee back even if he didn’t lose enough weight. In 12 weeks, Celadon staff lost 961 pounds. The Weight Watchers program continued, and the total weight lost has reached about 1,800 pounds.
