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Show Your Drivers You Care! Put a Healthy Trucking Kiosk in Your Terminal
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
-- Peter F. Drucker
Wellness Program Boosts Health, Reduces Costs
Con-way Freight has launched a major expansion of a successful wellness program that is improving the health and physical fitness of its employees while reducing incidences of workplace injuries and their associated costs.
Initially rolled out at 14 company facilities across eight states, the company is expanding the initiative into an additional 52 facilities, reaching 4,100 more employees in another 13 states. By the close of 2008, the program, provided in collaboration with Wellness Coaches USA, will be available to a total of 6,400 employees at 66 facilities in 21 states.
In conjunction with the program expansion, Con-way Freight also launched a 10-week weight loss competition titled “Choose to Lose.” The competition was open to employees throughout the company’s network of more than 400 service locations. Participating employees attended periodic weigh-ins and $100, $50 and $25 clothing store gift certificates were awarded to the first-, second- and third-place winners in each of the wellness program's regions. There was also an award for the service center with the greatest participation.
Extraordinary initial results and positive employee feedback were the primary factors behind the decision to expand the program, in which trained health and fitness professionals provided by Wellness Coaches USA are stationed at the company’s freight service centers.
“We’ve seen lifelong smokers quitting smoking, employees lowering chronic high blood pressure, overweight employees shedding pounds and still others discovering and being treated for life-threatening conditions,” says Bob Petrancosta, vice president of safety for Con-way Freight. “You can’t put a price tag on successes like that.”
Launched in early 2007 as a pilot program at several locations, participation in the wellness initiative quickly topped expectations, with as many as 95 percent of employees choosing to meet voluntarily and privately with their on-site coach for personal health assessment screening and counseling. The results were nearly immediate: by year-end 2007, the company saw workplace injuries and related worker’s compensation costs decrease by 80 percent, with lost work days cut by 75 percent at the pilot locations.
As the program has grown, so have the results, which to date have included:
• Nearly 831 employees losing a combined total of 6,269 pounds
• More than 170 employees quitting smoking
• 669 employees reducing blood pressure from hypertensive levels
• Nearly 1,470 employees improving overall health through exercise and diet regimens that lowered blood pressure
• More than 5,300 employees attending a combined total of 74,360 one-on-one coaching sessions
