Washington Workplaces Promote Wellness

PCC Natural Markets

The PCC Natural Markets, a cooperative grocery store in the Puget Sound Region, used the Washington Health Foundation’s Healthiest State Campaign to launch their employee wellness program in November 2006. According to Tom Monahan, Community Outreach Coordinator, PCC wanted to walk what they talk: health. Before using the Healthiest State Campaign as a catalyst to create a new employee program, the company offered general health tips to employees, but did not have an active wellness program or a way to track health changes.

Fortunately for Tom Monahan, the idea and decision to launch a company wellness program came from the CEO. Tom used a marketing approach to solicit buy-in from employees. Participation was marketed through employee newsletters, in-store posters, the company website, and through flyers included in the envelopes containing employee paychecks. He also tapped into the existing employee engagement in healthy habits, and determined that the next step would be to log their progress. In addition to encouraging the involvement of employees, PCC is unique in that its wellness program also marketed involvement from shoppers. Information about participating in the wellness program was included in each shopper’s grocery bag, as well as in the newsletter sent to PCC members and shoppers.

As part of its wellness program, PCC offers a 15 percent discount on food for store staff, and they regularly make seasonal fruit available to the employees in their break room. Employees were also all given pedometers to track their mileage. They have also issued a non-smoking policy and do not offer vending machines or sodas in the break room. PCC has also set up teams at www.HealthiestState.org which are representative of the eight PCC stores, the corporate office, and the shoppers.

Along with the positive strides PCC encountered some barriers. A major barrier that PCC faced was getting employees to find incentives for participation in the wellness program. Tom Monahan also noticed that the store employees were less likely to log their miles because they do not spend as much time on the computer, compared to the office employees, and some were not as computer savvy. To engage more of the store employees PCC is proposing a future initiative for the eight stores to compete against each other in tracking their wellness. The store to win the competition will receive a free catered lunch for all workers. PCC endeavors to make the wellness program sustainable by making it easier for staff to log-on. This will possibly include making it possible for employees to log in via the company’s intranet, and by creating logging terminals at the stores.

Tom Monahan encourages other companies to make sure that their wellness program is inclusive of all groups and employees, and to maintain an open line of communication between employees.

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