Ivy Hartman: Entrepreneurs know when their enterprises are healthy, but what about your employees and our guests today have some guidelines on how your employees can enjoy better health. Doctors Jason Deitch and Bob Hoffman are co-authors of the book Discover Wellness How Staying Healthy Can Make You rich. You’ve got my attention. And as an entrepreneurs we all want to know how we can be richer in our lives as well as our businesses, so how can employers encourage staff to participate in a wellness program.
Dr. Jason Deitch: Really, it starts at the top. It’s most important for employers to really expose that health is important within your organization, and to really be leaders and set an example themselves. From there, there are so many different things that they can do incentivize employees to participate. They can be as easy as just creating a culture and recognizing those people that do it. And it can be more advance by actually incentivizing them through financial incentives and other types of discount on their health insurance and things like that. The key is to reward the behavior that you want.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And that’s the key phrase. It’s learning how to reward the behaviors you want. So when your employees go for a walk or begin an exercise program or join a gym or start to lose weight or lower their cholesterol or go into a stress management program or begin some kind of body work, massage, therapeutic whatever it is it’s acknowledging it. It’s rewarding that behavior. It could be with a gift certificate. It could be with financial incentives. It could just be public display of acknowledgement in front of the rest of the company, but clearly we find that when that reward is taking place more people want to do it.
Ivy Hartman: You know every business is different, and our employees are different and maybe as a business owner you probably have a good tab on or polls of what your employees are, what incentives can benefit your business the most. Have there been some key incentives that you’ve seen offered that it really worked well for some small businesses?
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Well, it’s interesting that you even say that because when I used to interview people to hire them for our company. One of my first questions was, when you do a great job how do you like to be acknowledged? And because some people would say just a pat on the back and others say cash and you know we just want to know what your method of acknowledgement is because when you match it that’s when you make them happy. When you don’t match it and you think you’re doing a good job. They’re okay about it, but then they will not go the extra mile.
So the incentive process is really determined by the employee, but the employer knows what motivates them, what button to push. And sometimes it is a personal handwritten note or putting it in the company newsletter or a cash incentive or gift certificate for dinner or a show or a ballgame. Again, it depends on the situation, any kind of reward. It’s not about a dollar amount it’s about an acknowledgement.
Ivy Hartman: I think as an individual, I like that. If you noticed that I have kicked that my wellness or shaped up a few pounds or maybe cut back on smoking, if somebody else acknowledges that then that in a sense—
Dr. Bob Hoffman: You know it’s good.
Ivy Hartman: It does.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: It feels good, doesn’t it?
Ivy Hartman: It odes.
Dr. Jason Deitch: What’s important is for small business owners to realize their role and opportunity in playing the role and all of that. Many times I know as a business owner you kind of getting into this us and them mentality.
Ivy Hartman: Right.
Dr. Jason Deitch: And the real critical key here is to realize as a business owner especially as a small business owner it’s your job to focus on motivating your people to be their best. And so the more you incentivize your people to be their best, the better it works out for our bottom line is small business owners.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And the easiest way to lead is to lead by example. So when the CEO or the CFO or the board of some company depending on how the company is structured when they’re committed to wellness, when they’re taking action steps. When they are losing weight or joining a gym or healthier than ever before and it’s part of the culture and the conversation of a business even if it’s only for 10 or 20 or 30 employees people tend to follow the leader especially when here she makes it really important.
Ivy Hartman: You laid a great path for how to be an effective you know wellness implementation and leader in your business. Okay, so it seems obvious what the least effective tools or strategies might be from implementing a wellness program and be having it be successful. But why don’t you guys when talk about some of the things that you’ve seen?
Dr. Jason Deitch: I’ve seen some companies that basically kind of say, “Let’s get a wellness program it’s chic, it’s something we should do. Our consultant suggested we do it.” And basically they just kind of let the lowers deal with it and kind of handle it. And the leadership doesn’t really embrace it, and so they maybe delegated to the HR department and expect them to hand our some pamphlets and kind of expected be better to just join forces, or they don’t promote it properly, and they really don’t give people the need and the ideas to why this is so important.
I think businesses have to realize talking about incentives. What their incentive is for doing this. And there’s never been a more critical time ever for employers to really get their health costs under control, to be able to help their employees manage their health costs and to really be able to help employees and people do their very best to keep them as healthy as possible because as we talked about in the book that so important to realize is that the richness of life has everything to do with your health. And your health is your greatest asset. The more that you have, the richer you are. And businesses that have employee based of healthy and wealthy people are helping wealthy businesses.
Ivy Hartman: Well said. I’m just going to say talking about and speaking of incentive and then implementing a wellness program and having it be cost effective and things like that. You mentioned off camera, how inexpensive it can be or even an incentive could be here I’ll pay you to read this book because reading this book in itself could be the implementation to a wellness program in your business.
So thank you Dr. Jason Deitch and Dr. Bob Hoffman for being here and co-author of the book, Discover Wellness How Staying Healthy Can Make You Rich. And also if you’d like more information other than the book you can contact them through their website or phone number.
Dr. Jason Deitch: That’s correct. They can reach at www.discoverwellnesscenter.com.
Ivy Hartman: Thank you very much. Keep it right here at SBTV.com where small business is our only business.
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