Gold Healthy Workplace Awards - Gold Award Recipient

RWAM Insurance Administrators Incorporated

RWAM Insurance Administrators Incorporated began a 6-week walk-a-thon in May 2011 where all 200 staff were placed on teams consisting of 8 individuals each. Pedometers were given to all staff members to keep along with log-books to record their daily steps with the goal of 10,000 steps per day, per person. At the end of 6 weeks, the team with the highest average steps per person won.

During the contest, to encourage individuals to set weekly goals, RWAM also had “destination city” challenges where staff members were encouraged to walk the equivalent number of steps to reach that city from their Elmira office based on the calculation that it takes 1000 steps to walk 1 kilometre. This activity was new this year, and was an innovative way to help staff visualize the distance walked for the entire week. RWAM also had weekly draws for staff members who reached the “destination city” and distributed wellness-related prizes such as health books, healthy recipe books, core balance kits, and others. This proved to be very encouraging for all staff, regardless of individual fitness levels.

In addition, RWAM offered health risk assessments and heart clinics early on in the year where nurses would provide measurements of blood pressure, waist circumference, etc. These measurements were helpful to employees when setting their goals. In future years, RWAM would like to hold before and after assessments and clinics to allow employees to gauge their physical fitness progress.

RWAM aims to help its employees make long-term, sustainable health behaviour change by structuring their programs on habit forming theories (e.g., the 6-week walk-a-thon was aimed at creating habits of walking among staff that could extend past the 6-week activity). They also provided the pedometers to keep, further encouraging employees to continue their walking behaviour both at work and home. RWAM claims that these activities are not only great for physical fitness, but also extremely beneficial for team camaraderie.