Healthier Employees, Happier Employees
With 2010 around the corner, the four-woman team of WELLthy by Choice are hoping businesses in Douglas County will make healthy resolutions.
After Gov. Bill Ritter signed off on the health and wellness bill, 1012 in April, an idea was born by local wellness experts Rhonda Bolich-Lampo, Susan Kimball, Ashley Greninger and Victoria Torok. The law allows insurance companies to offer discounts and incentives to small businesses and their employees who participate in health and wellness programs.
WELLthy by Choice offers a unique, multifaceted program designed to get employees excited about a healthier lifestyle, by offering fast-track seminars and classes to assist employers with educating and inspiring their workforce.
“This is unlike any other corporate wellness program because our system includes education on the essential core elements of nutrition and supplementation, exercise, ergonomics and posture and mind-body integration,” Torok said.
After leaving her sales and marketing career at the age of 59, Torok wanted to pursue her passion, wellness.
“There is nothing that feels as good as feeling good,” Torok said. “I want every single person on earth to know that feeling.”
Torok offers personal training within the team and also has her own business, Elite Mobile Fitness.
Torok said that healthy employees are more productive and miss less work, and that equates into increased profits for the business owners and corporations. As for the employee, Torok said that 99 percent of illness and disease can be prevented with exercise and good nutrition.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are the employer or employee, preventing illness and disease is 1,000 times less costly than trying to cure it with drugs after the fact,” Torok said.
An article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that employers who invest in wellness programs can see a return of $3 to $5 for every dollar invested over a two-to five-year period.
Documented savings are seen in medical costs, absenteeism, worker’s compensation claims, short-term disability and lower on-the-job efficiency due to employee health problems.
Bolich-Lampo is a certified nutrition adviser and said one of the team’s clients worked with them on a company-wide, eight-week weight-loss contest. A small boot camp was orchestrated, weigh-ins were conducted and seminars were given on nutrition.
“We had several people who took it very seriously, and one woman lost almost 50 pounds,” Bolich-Lampo said.
Some of the employees wanted to change their entire lifestyle while others looked forward to less of a sedentary routine in their day-to-day activities.
Greninger is the third teammate of WELLthy by Choice and also is the owner of Lotus Heart Posture Alignment, who assesses the workplace for desk and computer equipment in alignment with the employee’s posture. With carpal tunnel syndrome being one of the many chronic conditions that can effect an employee, Greninger will spend 45 minutes with each worker on how high their chair is for instance, and what their body mechanics are. She also has worked with athletes who have developed poor posture, and pain will set in due to flat feet, low arches or uneven posture.
“Doing the work I do puts low joints back into alignment,” Greninger said. “Small changes can make a big difference.”
The final team member, rounding out the unique business, is Kimball, a holistic health counselor who includes nutrition counseling and life-coaching. She is a certified advance PSYCH-K facilitator and also owns Balanced Health Counseling in Denver.
The 1012 bill is one of three significant health care bills signed this year by Ritter. The other two include the Colorado Healthcare Affordability Act, a historic act that will provide health coverage to more than 100,000 uninsured Colorado residents, and House bill 1103, allowing patients in need of long-term care to be presumptively eligible for Medicaid, which will save costs and improve patients’ quality of life.
