Chamber gets fit

The healthiest thing to eat in an office shouldn’t be a powdered doughnut, and the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce thinks it has just the prescription needed to fix that problem and others affecting employee health.

Work Well Winter Park is a new initiative created by the Chamber and ACHIEVE, a group of community leaders whose goal is to promote health and innovation.

Chamber President Patrick Chapin said the purpose of Work Well is to get local employers to make gradual changes in the workplace to promote a healthy lifestyle.

“It’s not going to be a quick fix, but we’re going to be real strategic in how we engage,” he said.

The Winter Park Health Foundation, which supports local health programs and conducts health research, granted the new program $220,745.

“It’s an environment we’ve been seeking to work within and bring health to for a number of years,” Foundation Program Director Lisa Portelli said.

The Foundation follows the mantra: “Make the healthy choice the easy choice,” and gives away $2-$3 million per year. Portelli said the organization will remain involved in Work Well even after signing the check.

“I can’t find a chamber that has stepped forward in this large of a capacity with a willingness to begin to work health into their business model, in hope to promote it as a means of providing value to their members,” she said. “I really admire and appreciate their willingness to step forward.”

The strategy

Occupational stress costs the U.S. about $200 billion per year in absenteeism, lower productivity, staff turnover, workers’ compensation and medical insurance. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization has labeled it a “global epidemic”. Three in four American workers describe their job as stressful.

Work Well includes several strategies to address this problem.

The plan for the program involves changes in the life of a workplace that will lead to policy changes. An employer may offer workshops, stock vending machines with healthier options, extend lunch hours to offer employees time to take a walk, and set challenges to encourage employees to live healthier lives.

What makes this program different is that it will not create completely new resources; it will connect employers to resources already offered by community partners such as YMCA, Florida Hospital, Publix, public schools and local universities.

“What we’ll be doing is connecting all the resources within our community,” Chapin said. “There’s many partners within Winter Park that are offering extra keys already. We just need to show the employers and employees of Winter Park that their resources are out there.”

Community partners

The Central Florida YMCA plans to provide for the programs of Work Well. For example, if Work Well challenges employees to walk 10,000 steps per day, the Y can provide the means, staff and programs to support the effort.

“We know that less than 3 percent of people are going to exercise tomorrow,” said John Cardone, the district vice president of operations for the Y. So what we’re really hoping is that we can be kind of that bridge, because I think that a lot of companies … really struggle on how to get their employees active.”

Cardone said that the program will be successful because of the cooperation of so many community partners working with ACHIEVE. “I think it’s a true partnership and collaboration that’s going to make it successful and, more importantly, sustainable,” he said.

“These things tend to come and go, but having all of these resources around the table, I think will allow for sustainability way beyond us.”

The program is still in the early stages. Chapin is working to create an advisory committee and choose a director with experience in health. The plan is to begin recruiting employers in the fall and to have 10 employers in Winter Park adopt and implement the program’s workplace wellness policies by May.

“It’s really easy for even the most die-hard person to slip off their efforts to eat healthier, because the world just doesn’t support that, and we’re trying to change that,” Portelli said. “Getting into the worksites will assist us with that goal.”