Much of the work at Waterous Co. is physical in nature. The employees at the South St. Paul-based company manufacture firefighting equipment such as pumps and hydrants. But that doesn’t mean that they’re healthier than average workers. Director of Human Resources Rich Ryan says that point was driven home in 2003.
“A hydrant assembler who had worked here 33 years died from lung cancer,” Ryan says. “He was a chain smoker. Here’s a guy who had invested all of those years, yet didn’t come close to enjoying one day of retirement. You’ve only got one body.”
Ryan and his colleagues formed a committee called Healthy Steps, a rotating group that includes Waterous employees from all three shifts, plus consultants from Park Nicollet and health educators from Medica. The committee’s mission is to create a healthy work environment by providing awareness and education, and by fostering the belief that employees and their families are responsible for their own health and well-being.
The group set out an annual plan and started to make changes to the work environment, says Senior Human Resources Representative Deb Benson.
“We built a fitness center that we only charge our members $10 a month to utilize,” she says. “It was just an empty conference room, but it was ideal for putting in some state-of-the-art equipment. Because we run a three-shift operation, we do keep it open 24/7 except on the weekend. We also have a walking path along the river. We have seen an increase in people taking their breaks and lunches to go and walk on the path.”
Waterous has invited health professionals on site to perform various health-risk assessments. They’ve distributed pedometers. They have participated in Medica’s annual Shape-Up Challenge—and they won first place for two consecutive years.
“We’ve had weight loss challenges where we used our freight scale to weigh the entire teams at once,” says Ryan. “The group that would lose the highest percentage [of their initial weight] would win an award.”
“We try to change up the challenges every time,” Benson adds. ”We have discovered that if we repeat it exactly the same way, we don’t experience the same amount of participation the next time.”
Ryan and Benson have personally benefited from Healthy Steps. But the greatest reward is the overall positive change in the health of the employees. At a time when many firms’ health care costs are spiraling upward, Waterous’s have stabilized.
“We’ve had some employees—especially ones who have had their own significant health issues—who have begun to champion some of the programs and have gotten their coworkers to join in,” Benson says. “And although we can’t put numbers to it yet, we’ve had a lot of people who have quit smoking through the onsite smoking cessation program. Not all of our employees are vocal about the fact that they are changing their health behaviors. But when you speak to them one-on-one, it starts to come out.”
