Garden Fresh Competitions a Heart-Healthy Recipe for Wellness

For the past six years or so, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., the San Diego-based chain of 114 Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes salad buffet restaurants, has been putting together a lengthening menu of wellness activities for its employees.

The idea, says Lisa Sorce, the company’s director of compensation, benefits and internal auditing, is to improve employees’ health while controlling health care insurance costs.

“We really believe the future of health care is centered on wellness,” she said.

And while wellness programs may lower the company’s health care costs, she adds, it’s not easy to figure by how much. “Measurement is the hardest part,” she said.

But there are enough pluses to support the belief that the company, as well as its 6,000 employees, reaps rewards with a well-conceived wellness program.

“Definitely, the healthier you are, the less you’ll be at the doctor’s office or at the ER,” said Alma Preciado, the chain’s benefits coordinator. “It starts there.”

Kristin Carpenter, the company’s director of human resources, says there’s an overall awareness of the benefits of wellness programs by most companies.

“Everybody can see the logic behind it,” she said. But these days a lot of companies have put off implementing wellness initiatives, she notes. Tough economic times have forced many into survival mode, and wellness programs have been shelved.

Programs a Plus When Recruiting

But she notes that tough times or not, wellness programs not only produce a healthier work force, but bring camaraderie from wellness team activities. Beyond that, she says, “The impact I see is in recruiting. Job candidates want to work for a company that cares about them.”

Garden Fresh formally rolled out its companywide wellness program in October. It’s built on a business plan naming seven dimensions of employee wellness: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, career, social and environmental.

The first tier of it has preventive care measures integrated into its health care coverage, such as annual health screenings for early detection of any illness.

Employees have 24-hour access to a nurse to brainstorm a health issue before seeking prescription treatments.

If an employee discovers he or she has high blood pressure, dietary changes potentially can be made to help control it before it becomes a problem needing medication, says Preciado.

And employees with diabetes, for example, are offered newsletters with information on coping with the disease. Obesity, a chronic problem across the United States, hasn’t shown to be prevalent among employees, says Sorce, although the company offers weight-loss programs.

Garden Fresh’s health insurance benefits include discounts on health club memberships, acupuncture, and programs for healthy pregnancy, weight loss and smoking cessation. Tips for improving general health are also provided along with immunization shots for workers’ children.

“We tend to have a very young work force starting families,” said Sorce.

Tips to Minimize Health Conditions

The company looks at prescription spending by employees, then offers programs for employees to minimize or prevent the causes of the conditions for which they use medication. Since most employees are on their feet while working for the company, for instance, tips on how to alleviate foot stress and lower back pain are offered.

In February, 126 corporate employees on the company’s West and East Coasts took part in a fruits and vegetables schallenge. Participants, armed with tip sheets, competed for prizes by logging their daily intake of fruits and vegetables of various colors, such as red, green and yellow, an easier way to track than by servings.

And two years ago corporate staffers formed into groups of four and used pedometers in a contest to track how far they walked each week for a month.

Recommended were 10,000 daily steps, but those intent on placing in the competition exceeded that. “It got very competitive,” said Sorce.

Prizes were awarded for the top three walking totals, and the company achieved the desired results from the competition — more physically fit participants.

“It made people think about beneficial exercise,” said Preciado. Treadmills and bike machines at the corporate office gym had plenty of use, she adds, and contestants tended to walk more at the mall or find time to walk the dog. “It made employees realize simple ways of starting slow and gradually building up.”

To encourage routine fruit and vegetable consumption, meanwhile, fresh fruits and vegetables are offered in the company office kitchens.

And the company has organized run and walk teams for employees who compete in fun runs and walking events.

The company is fortunate, says Sorce, in that the business is committed to fresh food so it tends to attract employees who eat fresh fruits and vegetables and are likely healthier than the average employee.

Employees Win Rewards for Exercising

In May, the company will have its “Wellness Jackpot” program in which participants earn scratch-off cards for exercising more, losing weight and quitting smoking. The cards reveal points they can accrue to win prizes such as weights, a treadmill, vitamin supplements, yoga sessions and cookbooks.

The company also offers employees a webinar on health risk detection, a wellness newsletter, and a 50-page wellness journal that has readers assess their own health and set goals for improvement.

The company just joined San Diego County’s Worksite Wellness Coalition. The group’s goals are to promote a culture of workplace wellness in the county by helping businesses figure out ways to curb health care costs, and serve as a forum for sharing wellness information.

As for Garden Fresh, wellness is an ever-evolving task that each year needs to be scrutinized for possible adjustments.

“It really is annually driven,” said Sorce of the company’s wellness pursuits. “Programs are evaluated to see: Did it work? Was it received well? Are changes needed?”

Mark Larson is a freelance writer for the Business Journal.