Wellness staff lead employees in on-line move
Pfizer program geared for education, self-care
Bob Calabritto, MS, ATC, health, fitness, and rehabilitation specialist for New York City-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., was not looking for miracles when he decided to try an on-line service for his employees. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to track improvements in employee health and productivity. "We did it because it’s fun," he explains. "We said, Let’s do something nice for our employees without worrying about the numbers."
That "something" is Rodale’s Online Health, which is offered by Emmaus, PA-based Rodale Health promotions.
Its major components include:
• Health Library. An indexed, searchable database that covers hundreds of health-related subjects. Each queried item connects electronically to related topics throughout the database.
• Self Care. This section contains the contents of Don R. Powell’s book, Health at Home: Your Complete Guide to Symptoms, Solutions & Self-care.
• Quick and Healthy Kitchen. This section offers more than 25 new recipes each month, and its recipe box organizes and archives hundreds more. Recipes include fat and sodium content, percentages of calories from fat, and amount of soluble fiber.
• Monthly Bulletins. These include "For Men and Women," gender-specific health information; "Safety Check," tips for maintaining safety at work, at home and on the road; "Work & Home," tips on balancing home and work life; "Research News," which keeps subscribers abreast of the latest medical discoveries. This section also includes new information from over 100 health and fitness research journals.
Wellness staff were first users
Pfizer’s on-line journey has actually unfolded in two stages. The first began in March 1998, when Rodale’s Online was made available to the health and wellness staff at the corporate fitness center. "They utilized it a lot, and they really loved it," Calabritto recalls. "We decided a year later that the price was right, and that we should offer it to our employees at headquarters."
While Calabritto would not give an exact figure, he did say that "for the price of a cup of coffee and a bagel" per employee, Pfizer contracted for the service for 2,700 employees.
The launch was preceded by a concerted marketing effort. Although Rodale’s offered fliers and paycheck stuffers, Calabritto designed his own flier to accompany those materials.
"Ours was a little more concise; it really got the point across," he notes. The staff also put up large posters at the entrance of all New York Pfizer buildings, and in the fitness and health services center. The posters, which are still up, tell employees about "your newest healthcare benefit."
How effective was the marketing campaign? "We had 2,000 hits in the first four days," Calabritto recalls.
The on-line service has been mainly used to help employees learn more about health on their own. "They use it for self-education," Calabritto explains. "If an employee member wants information on skin cancer, they can get it. Most of the information comes from good sources."
What’s more, he adds, an employee’s family can access the site from home, via the Internet and a password provided by the company. "Or, you can go to our Health & Wellness Intranet site, and just click on Rodales,’" he says.
His initial goal, Calabritto underscores, is "to provide employees with easy, convenient, easily understandable and current and legitimate health care information. This is a consolidation of a lot of good consumer health and wellness magazines. The pieces are not very long; they flow easily and they’re easy to understand."
Calabritto appreciates the convenience of the on-line service, as well as the way it’s organized — he’s sold on the utilization of computer technology for improving health and wellness.
So why isn’t he worrying about the numbers? "Sure, we could do a survey — and we may do one on the future — but right now we’re just having fun," he concludes.
(What areas of this on-line service do employees visit most often? The answer may surprise you. See article, below.)
[For more information, contact: Robert Calabritto, Pfizer Inc., 235 E. 42 nd St., New York, NY 10017. Telephone: (212) 573-1212. E-mail: calabr@ pfizer.com.]
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