News and Articles—Employee Engagement

Encouraging Wellness for Fun & Profit

Anderson Performance Improvement runs its own wellness incentive program as well as programs for clients. The benefits are obvious for all concerned, CEO and President Louise Anderson says.

By Jerry Laws
January 2011

Taking a fun, team-oriented approach to wellness among its own employees proved to be a winning strategy for Anderson Performance Improvement, a 16-year-old incentive company that won a 2010 Circle of Excellence Award from the Incentive Marketing Association for its 2009 program. The program focused on healthy diet and exercise as a way to address weight loss, smoking, and health risk factors such as hypertension, said Louise Anderson, CEO and president of the Hastings, Minn.-based company, which has about 100 employees.

She said the company submits one or two entries annually in this award program and won one in 2005; Anderson Performance Improvement initially submitted client cases but wanted to be as proactive as its clients, so the decision was made to enter its own program results, too, she explained. The 2010 award is significant because this award program had not recognized anyone for a wellness incentive until then, Anderson said.

The team concept is essential to the success achieved this far, and individual results are not being shared, she said. "It's not so much about weight loss, it's about doing the right things every day. It's awareness and focus, being aware of the foods you're putting in your body," she added. "You would not believe how many pounds our team lost, cumulatively. We've lost a lot of inches because we're walking more, we're exercising more. It's interesting; different things motivate different people. By having the awards, having them see how good people look, it's been really fun to see the changes and see who jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak."

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