Ah, corporate wellness.  It sounds like such a good idea.  Bringing together the work place and healthy living--what could possibly go wrong?

At Recess, we hear plenty of stories about corporate wellness programs, both the very, very good and the very, very bad.  This month, we thought we'd have some fun and focus on the latter. 

Have your own corporate wellness horror story?  Tell us about it, and you could win a sweet Recess t-shirt and a yoga mat!

There are some general missteps that many corporate wellness programs seem to take.  We'll touch on some of them below, highlighted by a couple of brilliant examples.

Time Sucking Surveys

Here's the scene: your company has just signed up for a new corporate wellness program.  They've even offered some sort of incentive to those who take an online health risk assessment.  Here's the thing.  This survey is long.  It involves the set up of multiple accounts involving multiple passwords.  As they complete it, employees slump over their desks, munching on edible, food-like substances, clicking to the next screen (and the next, and the next, and the next) as fast as they can.  The assessment asks questions like,  "How much do you smoke?  Drink?  Exercise?"  And the employee answers, "A lot.  A lot. Not at all."  When it's all over, the employee gets an official-looking report telling them to stop smoking, stop drinking, and exercise more.  Ya think?

Too bad the employer paid 50 bucks a person for this earth-shattering feedback.

Poster Disasters

This time, your health vendor is really jazzed to be able to offer you "internal promotion templates" that your wellness team can use to promote events.
The customizable aspect of these templates is a teeny-tiny place for your company logo in the corner.  Most of the page is taken up by a skinny, sexy lady munching a carrot or jogging on the beach.

Or posters present the opposite problem.  This New York Times article
tells the story of an overweight teenage girl whose high school was going through a wellness campaign: Hallways were plastered with posters saying "Prevent teenage obesity." After the posters went up, the girl said, schoolmates began taunting her in the halls, pointing at the obese girl on the posters and saying, "Look at the fat chick."  She said heavier students were now made to feel guilty about their lunch choices, but the thin ones could eat anything they wanted without comment - even if it was exactly what the fat kids were eating.

As if you need one more way in which your office feels like high school, right?

Questionable Coaching

Suppose one of the many "fantastic features" offered in your corporate wellness package is an "I Can Quit!" program where you can supposedly call a coach to help you quit smoking.

We've seen this go three different ways.

In one instance, someone tried to use the program and it didn't even exist. Someone picked up in another country and was completely confused, asking, "What program? Who are you?"

In another case, coach and client actually connected, but both were multitasking the entire time.  Nothing tells you you're being supported like the ping of incoming instant messages on the computer on the other side of the line.

Finally, we heard from one fellow who worked with his life coach over several months and was one day happy to report that he had successfully quit smoking.  "I'm sorry," his coach told him, "but based on your past habits and historical data, I just can't believe that you've really quit for good."

After that, he spent over half an hour trying to talk to the supervisor of the coaching program and convincing them to remove him from their call list. 

All of these conversations took place on the company's dime, mind you.

Poor Allocation of Resources

Here's another image from an Oregon office that had us shaking our heads.

In the parking lot of this office, the company paid to have a tent set up for smokers to huddle under so they can get their nicotine fixes during the Oregon rainy season.  Right next to the smokers' tent is a bike rack, uncovered.  All rainy day long, smokers would watch drenched bikers come and go, seeing them get even wetter as they fiddled with lights and locks by the rack.  Awesome.

Another office offered lunch-time yoga once a week.  Often, those doing yoga (a small group) had their practice interrupted by the smell of tator tots and Velveeta-based "cheese" dip from the employee cafeteria that the rest of their co-workers ate for lunch. 

Your wellness plan salesman may have told you that, "It's only two cents per person per year to enroll your workforce in this coaching program." But then when you see the annual report and only three people used the program all year, in reality, the cost was more like $1250 per person per year.  Whoops?

Contests Gone Awry

And finally, rounding out our wellness program failures, is the well-intentioned, but oh-so-misguided office weight loss contest.

It's one thing to build on the support and accountability of friends and coworkers to help you be healthier.

It's another thing entirely to make it all about the numbers.  Sure, over time you can safely lose weight by eating healthier foods and upping your exercise, but if you're trying to lose weight quickly to win a contest, there are much faster routes.  Methamphetamine, say, or liquid diets followed by a trip to the sauna. 

But don't worry about potential life-threatening side effects.  In the words of Kelly from The Office, you're "gonna look amazing."