Pitas, Pilates and the Patch

As anyone who’s worked in the corporate world knows, at some point in your career you’ll likely have to put up with some type of work intrusion on your personal time. But what was once the occasional lunchtime meeting or after-hours team building session is now beginning to follow you home.

Are you being forced by your employer to lose weight or quit smoking just because they want to save money by lowering their health insurance costs? You’re not alone. Wellness programs are popping up in companies across the U.S. faster than personal injury lawyers at a 50-car pile-up on the Hollywood Expressway.

Almost a third of companies that offer health insurance benefits to their employees also provide some sort of wellness program. Fitness, smoking cessation and weight-loss programs are the most frequently offered services.

While most companies say they have a genuine concern for their employees’ well-being, anyone with common sense—which seems to be only about 50 percent of the U.S. population—understands the rising cost of health care is the obvious driving factor. Obesity-related health issues alone cost American companies approximately $13 billion per year.

I understand the concept of trying to save the company money to better the bottom line, while hopefully improving the health and "wealth-fare" of employees. But you know that the phrase “Health and Wellness” is really code for “Not Fat.” In carrying out these health initiatives to employees, HR departments need to be a little more creative when it comes to getting employees to eat healthier and lose those extra 10 holiday pounds which just do not want to disappear by themselves. Offering a dollar off the cost of the “healthy lunch choice of the day” in the company cafeteria, consisting of a choice between the overpriced salad bar sold by the ounce and an overcooked boiled chicken dish with asparagus, is hardly an incentive to pass up a meatball sub. And giving the healthy choice selection a fancy name like “Tuna Nicoise” doesn’t make canned tuna smothered in vegetables and fat-free mayo any more appetizing. Hiding it in a pita wrap is NOT fooling anyone.

And who wants to lie on the cafeteria floor after work on a Pilates mat next to the hairy overweight guy from Accounting who wears the same grotesquely tight biking shorts and his Star Wars “Return of the Jedi” t-shirt each session. Picture him trying to perform downward facing dog in front of you. I’m sorry, but nobody is going to reach enlightenment looking at that for 60 minutes. And tell me how it’s considered appropriate for a company to sponsor a program based on an ancient Hindu form of spirituality and fitness? What good can come of it? The Beatles tried it and we ended up with “Yellow Submarine.” Not to mention if a company brought in a Catholic priest to conduct an exercise class (commonly known as “Cathoaerobics,” a 45-minute program involving repetitive sitting, standing and kneeling) the ACLU would be all over them.

Where’s the ACLU when companies start to dictate personal behavior outside of the workplace? Who’s to say someone who smokes or is overweight is more at risk to cost their employer more in insurance premiums than an in-shape non-smoker? Last time I checked healthy people die too...and smoking is still legal in this country (for now).

Unfortunately someone forgot to tell companies and organizations like the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who banned all tobacco use from their campus and hospital, including the parking lots. If an employee is caught smoking, they risk being fired. Some employers have gone as far as forbidding their employees to light up even at home. There are unbelievably at least 20 states that allow for this type of discriminatory work policy, including Ohio, where the state’s second-largest employer, the Cleveland Clinic, stopped hiring smokers.

In Massachusetts, an employee of the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a lawn-care technician, was fired on his 30th birthday after testing positive for nicotine. The employee is—not surprisingly—suing Scotts for invasion of his privacy and civil rights. Where will it end? Are companies going to screen potential employees by forcing them to undergo genetic testing so some second-rate sociology major with an online human resources certificate from the University of Phoenix can predict that 20 years down the road, the company may have to supplement payment of someone’s cancer treatments?

If companies want to improve their bottom line, instead of trying to reduce insurance premiums by imposing healthy choices on employees, why don’t HR departments spend money on their potential candidate screening processes? Instead of helping employees to “find themselves” and worrying about whether someone may develop diabetes 10 years on, how about focusing on whether that person is competent. Fewer idiots working for your company has to be worth something to the bottom line. And I know my time in the office would be much less stressful.

Marc “Wiggy” Kovacs - Professor of Pizza, Patanjali and Partagas