Of course, not all employee wellness programs are created equal.  

Recess' full service program gives you everything you would expect from a science-based corporate wellness program, but with that added extra mile we go to drive participation and make it fun and easy for employees, including:

• Custom corporate wellness program development and strategy.
• Employee population health risk analysis.
• Health Risk Assessment roll-out and interpretation.
• Management education, coaching and training.
• Start tracking return on investment (ROI) data from day one.  Metrics document defined and created up front.
• Corporate wellness team start-up, coaching and development.
• We help you set-up and track your custom wellness program using deep integration.  We coordinate with: EAP, disease management programs, health care providers, benefits broker, recruitment and human resources.
• Design and rollout of custom health intervention campaigns.
• Monthly or quarterly management updates and data review.
• An expert Recess consultant at the table during health plan renewal.
• "Recess Approved Fun Workplace" seal on your recruitment site.
  

The Swine Flu is not the only thing that's contagious these days.  A study done by professors James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis of the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University, respectively, reports that something else is spreading too, and it can't be stopped by hand washing.  Loneliness, they say, can spread through a social network.

Researchers noted that a discrepancy had already been established between an individual's loneliness and the number of connections in a social network--someone can be surrounded by lots of people and still feel lonely--but they were curious if loneliness could spread, counter intuitive as the idea is.

"Results indicated that loneliness occurs in clusters, extends up to three degrees of separation, is disproportionately represented at the periphery of social networks, and spreads through a contagious process."

And what does that mean in practical terms?  Fowler and Chistakis suggest that, "efforts to reduce loneliness in our society may benefit by aggressively targeting the people in the periphery to help repair their social networks and to create a protective barrier against loneliness that can keep the whole network from unraveling."

The whole network unraveling?  That's scary stuff!  But add to that this data from the SHRM, and you've got a lonely, unhealthy, terrifying sounding future:

As the unemployment rate rises, employees who still have jobs tend to smoke more, drink more and exercise less, the analysis shows. For example, doubling the unemployment rate from...April 2008 to April 2009 increased the expected percentage of employees who smoke daily by 25 percent and who smoke occasionally by 18 percent. The share of non-exercisers increased by about 9 percent, and all other levels of weekly exercise decreased.

And all this risky health behavior can create a productivity problem and lead to unexpected absences.  The same articles cites research in Sweden that found that workers who smoke take about one-third more sick leave days per year than nonsmokers or former smokers.  

So with loneliness spreading and scary health habits exploding, what could possibly be the antidote?  Hold on to your hats, you're never going to believe this...it's happiness!


Happiness also spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion, according to another study by Fowler and Christakis that looked at nearly 5,000 individuals over a period of 20 years:

"When an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. One person's happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only his friends, but his friends' friends, and his friends' friends' friends. The effect lasts for up to one year. Conversely, sadness does not spread through social networks as robustly as happiness."

Previous research has shown that certain behavior-based phenomena such as obesity and smoking cessation spread through networks like a social contagion, but this is the first to demonstrate that emotions can as well. This research adds further proof to the idea that because we are all interconnected in social networks, our health is interconnected as well.

Just ask John Cleese and these yogis.  But don't be surprised if they can't answer through their unstoppable laughter.