This SmartBrief Insights guest post comes from Janet McNichol, SPHR, CAE, is the Human Resources Director at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She is passionate about health and wellness and blogs about her experience managing ASHA’s program at Inside Workplace Wellness. Connect with her on LinkedIn or  Twitter at @jmcnichol.  

We’ve had a lot of success with our wellness program over the years. Many staff members participate in screenings and educational events and 25% of the staff take at least one exercise class a week in the office. While we are pleased with the level of participation, there are still more employees that we are hoping to reach. We decided to build on the TV excitement and kick off a Biggest Loser program in January 2010 — 99 staff members (40% of the staff) signed up to participate! This far exceeded our expectations.

We have an ongoing relationship with LifeWork Strategies, an affiliate of Adventist Health Care. They have done our on-site screenings for years and our staff trusts them. We contracted with them to handle all the screenings and most of the education for our Biggest Loser program.

We calendared out the whole program and shared that information with staff before they made a commitment to participate. This turned out to be critical to the success of the program. People knew what to expect and what they were committing to do from the start. We even had everyone sign a pledge of participation and encouraged everyone to take the commitment seriously.

We formed 11 Biggest Loser Teams. Our 12 week program included the following components:

Screenings and Assessments

We conducted assessments at the beginning, middle and end of the program. Each assessment included weight, BMI, body fat, waist circumference, push-ups, sit-ups, flexibility and blood pressure. The initial and end point assessments also included a blood draw with a lipid panel and a glucose test. These blood tests were the biggest expense to the program. About a week after the initial assessment, each individual met one-on-one with a nurse and received a written report with the results. People also set individual goals for themselves.

If we do this again, we’ll probably keep the screenings simpler — just weight, body fat, and maybe cholesterol and blood glucose. We’ll save the fitness related assessments for other programs.

Weekly Weigh-Ins

We required all the participants to weigh-in weekly and report their weight confidentially via our intranet. Although public humiliation can be motivational, we decided to deviate from the show in this respect. We have good doctor’s office type scales in both our men’s and women’s locker rooms, but we used a basic digital scale at the initial screenings since it was easy to move. Afterward, we put it in the HR area for people to use for their weekly weigh-ins. LifeWorks Strategies kept the “official” numbers for our participants and we recognized our winners at the conclusion of the program based on the “official” numbers.

Team Challenges

The program included three Biggest Loser Team Challenges. Participation increased with each challenge and there were lots of smiles and laughter. True Athlete Performance planned and executed the events for us. They have experience running high school sports combines, so putting 11 teams through three challenges in two hours was a walk in the park for them.

A few people asked us what the activities would be, but we decided to keep the specifics under wraps much like the show. We did let folks know that there would be a speed and agility challenge, a strength challenge and a balance challenges. The activities were all things the participants could do dressed in their casual Friday attire and tennis shoes. We declared first, second and third place with bragging rights being the prize. You can read more about each of the team challenges and see pictures here, here and here.

Next week we will explore the rest of the program components and share our results.