Health In Hand
by Michelle Morra-Carlisle
With a bit of creativity, incentive products can motivate employees to live healthier lives.
Countless studies have shown that a sick workforce is not nearly as productive as a healthy one. Employees who smoke, eat unhealthy foods and have little to no exercise regime are often sick, tired and unmotivated. Employers care about the health of their workers, and it’s in their best interest to care — yet many find that having a healthy workplace program isn’t enough.
“Promotional products can be used to achieve a variety of objectives,” says Alex Morin, Vice-president of sales for Debco. “Most recently, we’ve seen a spike in the use of promotional
products to enhance the awareness of health and wellness.” These have included bicycle repair kits to promote fundraising bicycle marathons, yoga mats as a mail offer to promote a healthconscious
yogurt company, and a particularly creative campaign that revolved around the martial art of karate.
A karate school wanted to boost enrolment of new students and sustain enrolment of its existing students. To attract new students it put on a martial arts performance in selected public
schools, during which performers not only showcased their karate skills but used folding Frisbees as targets to hit as part of their show. After the performance, they gave out these folding
Frisbees (imprinted with the karate school’s logo and contact information) to everyone in the audience.
To sustain enrolment of its existing clientele, the karate school gave out a reward of a coloured gift to match each colour (level) of belt level achieved. For instance, when a new student began
as a white belt, he or she received a white water bottle with the karate school’s logo on it. Anyone reaching the yellow belt received a yellow umbrella, and so on. As a result of the promotion and incentives, the karate school saw a spike in enrolment after every school presentation, and students achieving rewards at every belt level responded favourablyto the incentives.
Promoting health is not a new idea. Everyone knows that exercise and healthy eating equals better fitness and health. Can an inexpensive toy or other tangible product help make it happen?
According to an annual survey of 600 large U.S. companies by Hewitt & Associates, employers are changing how they measure the success of their healthy workplace programs. While less than a third
focused primarily on controlling their annual healthcare costs, the 2010 survey revealed almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of employers currently invest in long-term solutions to improve the overall health and productivity of their workforce. According to the Hewitt survey, the percentage
of employers using incentives, including cash, gift cards or products, rose from 35 per cent in 2009 to 63 per cent in 2010.
Incentives have certainly helped boost traffic in malls throughout North America. Morin describes a campaign to attract mall walkers that started with radio and newspaper ads, inviting seniors to visit the information desk at their local mall and collect a free pedometer, logoed with the property management company’s name. A brochure advertising retail outlet participants encouraged them to “activate” their pedometers at a vitamin store, where they received a free sampler of vitamins and other products and had their pedometers reset to zero. As they walked through the mall following a map, they could collect other free products including hand sanitizers, tote bags, lunch bags and folding Frisbees, from participating retailers.
“One of the more interesting giveaways was provided by a food-court tenant that gave samples of their healthy ginseng tea,” says Morin. “They claim to have boosted sales, in the period that the promo was held, by over 120 per cent!”
When they left the mall, “walkers” were encouraged to show their pedometers to someone at an electronics company. The retailer took down the information and notified one participant per day, by telephone, that they had taken the most steps and had won a prize — a B6900 blanket in a bag.
The campaign was a hit: foot traffic in the malls increased, retail revenue went up, seniors
benefited from exercise, and all were supported by the media who did several spotlights on the
initiative.
Libby Norris, a fitness expert and owner of Inspired Energy Inc., says pedometers are a popular product with her corporate clients, too. She gives them out when she speaks at corporate “lunch and learns,” and says people relate to numbers.
“All the geeky things, we fitness experts say, have more impact for people if there’s a number
attached,” she says. “If you just say, ‘take the stairs,’ people roll their eyes. But if you say, ‘x flights of stairs equals x miles a week,’ they’ll pay attention.”
That was the idea behind a Health by Numbers event at General Electric, where employees received a free pedometer just for showing up in their running shoes. By participating in fitness activities they could qualify for larger items, including a draw for a bicycle as a grand prize.
“With their pedometers we encouraged employees to shoot for 10,000 steps a day,” Norris says. “It got people talking and raised awareness. They’d say things like, ‘I did 7,000 steps today but I‘ll try for 8,000 tomorrow’”.
GE is one of the lucky companies whose head office has a gym. Every time employees use it, they collect points that can later be redeemed for apparel, resistance bands or other incentive products. The fitness centre not only helps employees cope better with their busy schedules and stay productive and motivated, it enhances their job satisfaction. Rafaella Gilbert,
a recruiter for GE, says the fitness centre is always one of the first perks she mentions in interviews and considers herself fortunate to have it.
“I notice the people who come to the gym have a different attitude,” she says. “We work very hard at our jobs. The work is still there, but we can take a break, and the workout allows us to
talk to people we wouldn’t normally see. And there’s less stress.”
But even for employers that have no gym or other big-ticket health or fitness resources, small-scale incentives can still be a strong motivator. For a courier company, Norris supplied travel kits for employees to use at home or on the road. The kits contained exercise tools such as a resistance band, bender ball or skipping rope, a pedometer, and a customized instruction booklet, all packaged in a small drawstring bag branded with the company logo. Exercise DVDs, she says, are another effective way to promote fitness at home or on business trips, especially if packaged with an incentive product.
Besides physical fitness, sun safety is increasingly on employers’ radar and has led to the popularity of inexpensive incentives such as sunscreen and lip balm. Norris sometimes purchases these in bulk for various healthy workplace campaigns.
Ergonomic products, too, are a sign of the times as Canada’s aging workforce frequently misses work because of lower back pain and other musculoskeletal injuries. Max Baer of Bag Designs says his corporate clients are looking for new ways to promote ergonomics.
Obus Forme, the manufacturer best known for its back cushions, also makes backpacks, of which Bag Designs is the sole distributor. Ergonomically designed, each backpack features air mesh on the back to relieve pressure points, a waist strap to prevent the load from shifting, a lumbar support pad, a built-in plastic board that keeps the back of the pack rigid to support the load, compression strips on the inside to compact the load, shoulder cinch straps, contoured shoulder straps, sternum straps and more. Baer says the backpacks are extremely popular (not surprising if you’ve ever travelled any distance on foot with a standard, non-ergonomic load on your back).
Health goes viral
While some campaigns promote a product, service, company or healthy lifestyle, others more directly promote health. Roxanne Manoliu of Medonyx Inc., a promotional products supplier, has given out hand sanitizers to people at both promotional products conferences and health conferences, which are well received for different reasons.
“At promotional conferences, people say the hand sanitizers are ‘so cute,’ and they are,” she says. “But for the healthcare people, hand sanitizers are really the difference between life
and death.”
Infection control is critical for H1N1, SAARS and other outbreaks, but having a hand sanitizer
isn’t enough if you don’t use it effectively. First responders or nurses, for example, often
touch people or their surroundings without yet knowing their diagnosis. Even if they do reach
for a bottle of hand sanitizer they could, in the meantime, contaminate their car, their shirt
pocket, and anything else their hand comes in contact with first. That’s why Medonyx offers their GelFast hand sanitizer (approved by the FDA and Health Canada) as a clip-on product that healthcare professionals and first responders can wear on their belts and reach for immediately.
Manoliu says healthcare settings are not the only workplaces where infections are possible. Any place where there are lots of people, or where money — a very dirty commodity — is exchanged, could benefit from hand sanitizers.
When H1N1 was still a major concern in Canada, Bag Designs launched a flu kit that included an face mask, vinyl gloves, hand sanitizer, antiseptic towelettes and more. The kits are still available and can be customized.
Employers cannot force employees to take care of their health. Whether they offer a corporate Weight Watchers program, or organic food choices in the cafeteria, there’s no guarantee that people will get active, wash their hands, take up yoga or give up the fries. It’s not that people need to be told to take care of their health, but we need motivation, time and inclination to do the right thing.
“A healthy workplace program only works if you’ve got the support structure around it,” Norris says. “Everyone’s inundated with information. Incentives help anchor the focus. Nobody needs an infomercial fitness product, but if it reminds you to get off the couch, it’s worth its weight in gold.”
