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Fitness isn’t a game at Noblesville-based IDSolutions, but that hasn’t stopped the global visual communications firm from co-opting one to make its fitness program fun for employees.
Among its more unique fitness challenges is Fitness Monopoly, where teams of three employees try to control the board and win prizes.
For one million steps, or an equivalent number of points won through fitness incentives, a team can buy Boardwalk, the most expensive property on the board. Buy all the properties of a particular color, or buy a utility or railroad, and your team gets gift cards as a reward. Last time the game lasted four months and participants got cash prizes based on where their team finished. “The strategies and side wagers are already happening” for the new game, said Tim Moran, the firm’s controller and the leader of IDSolutions wellness program.
Fitness Monopoly is just one of the challenges IDSolutions offers to get its 31 local and 18 remote employees thinking about the importance of healthy living. It’s rare that there isn’t some sort of challenge going on at the firm. Among the challenges the company has had is Healthiest Winner, a lifestyle modification challenge that is broader than the ubiquitous Biggest Loser contests. Others include March Step Madness, in which teams compete against one another to see who can log more steps, and Indy 500, where employees earn miles and laps by engaging in healthy activities.
The firm started its wellness program in 2011 when it changed benefit brokers. Moran and company owner Tracy Mills had read about the importance of wellness programs and settled on a vendor after thoroughly examining the offerings of three candidates.
The winning firm, American Health & Wellness Group, swayed Moran and Mills with one of its signature offerings, a personalized wellness website for each employee. The site offers tailored diet and exercise advice and tracks results of the various tests employees take as part of a regular health assessment.
Employees also get free pedometers. If they record 6,000 steps a month and/or record information about diet, exercise and other measures in their personal log they get $75 in that month to spend any way they choose. IDSolutions employees don’t have to walk far to get some exercise. The firm has an onsite exercise room and showers and is close to outdoor fitness paths and other public recreational areas.
The company offers lunch and learn sessions several times a year and took steps to encourage employees to stick around for lunch rather than leaving the building for fast food. The break room was expanded, and the kitchen was equipped with a second refrigerator and two microwaves. Gone is the company’s vending machine, replaced with healthy snack options hand selected by Mills, the firm’s owner.
Among the regular wellness seminars the company offers was one that involved a health coach giving a grocery store tour and a healthy cooking demonstration, complete with a food tasting.
The benefits don’t stop there. Employees get $550 a month to spend on any combination of medical, dental, long-term disability or life insurance. IDSolutions also offers a flexible spending account and Health Savings Account.
Having a robust wellness program is good for everyone, even those who were, by all outward appearances, healthy to begin with. But sometimes looks can be deceiving. One of IDSolutions healthiest employees discovered in a routine screening a problem with high cholesterol, Moran recalled. Without IDSolutions’ commitment to employee health and well-being, employees might not be getting the treatment they are receiving today.•
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