HR Happy Hour – Episode 66 – ‘Wrestling with Wellness’

Thursday September 23, 2010 – 8PM ET

Subtitle – ‘It is quite possible you are too fat to work here’.

You can’t swing a cat around the office these days without coming up against some corporate wellness type initiatives. Whether it is Sally in Accounting handing you a pedometer, a company sponsored Weight Watchers meeting (oddly they are always at lunch time), or the benefits team trying to convince, cajole, or badger you into quitting smoking, twinkies, or sitting on your butt all week.

Wellness in the workplace is a fact of life for many of us now, and for the folks in the organization responsible for keeping the company’s benefits costs under control, it is really a serious matter.

But wellness at work is kind of a contradictory concept. We want folks to work like dogs, put in extra hours, fuel up on caffeine to keep going, and often engage in lots of behaviors that are not all the ‘well’.

And the idea of an employer monitoring your habits, diet, and really personal affairs does not sit well with many employees. And the last thing we want is for the company or employees to turn into the diet police at work.

But health care costs spiral out of control, and orgs can’t continue to bear these increases (and neither can employees). So where is the happy medium between ‘big brother’ monitoring and thoughtful, successful, and enlightened wellness programs.

I am not sure, so this week Fran Melmed, Tanya Barham, and Greg Mathews will join us on the show to wrestle with wellness. I hope you can join us.