Group recognizes Anheuser-Busch, Sentara for employee programs

Virginia Business
October 2006

Battle of the Breweries sounds like a beer-drinking competition. Instead, it’s part of an award-winning wellness program for Anheuser-Busch’s Williamsburg brewery. A weight-loss competition between Williamsburg employees and workers at Busch’s brewery in Baldwinsville, N.Y., represents one of the ways the company is trying to put fun into helping workers with the fundamentals of good health.

The company also sponsors a “Team UpWith Your Doctor” contest that encourages employees and their families to visit primary-care physicians for annual checkups. When they go, employees can enter their names in a drawing for a trip to a major sporting event or a travel voucher worth $5,000.

These are some of the wellness initiatives that put Anheuser-Busch in first-place in an annual competition for corporate wellness programs sponsored by the Virginia Business Coalition on Health. The Williamsburg brewery won for employers with fewer than 5,000 workers while Sentara Healthcare in Virginia Beach won for large companies with more than 10,000 workers.

The coalition has sponsored the competition for several years. In the past, corporate emphasis on wellness has been “relatively flat,” says Eileen E. Ciccotelli, the coalition’s vice president for strategic development. However, she adds, “All that is quickly changing.”

While some businesses are encouraging employees to stay healthy through monetary rewards such as a reduction in insurance premiums, others such as Anheuser-Busch and Sentara provide on-site incentives. Sentara’s Healthy Edge program offers flu shots for employees at its more than 70 locations, while Busch provides a fitness center used by more than 250 employees at least twice a week. Staffed with certified fitness trainers, the center is open 24/7 to accommodate all shifts and schedules.

On their breaks, Busch employees also can check their blood pressure on machines in the employee cafeteria. “We believe these programs have a positive influence on employees’ mental and physical well being, both on and off the job,” says Brian McNelis, plant manager at the Williamsburg brewery.

At the heart of Sentara’s program is an online health-risk appraisal, which helps employees focus on areas for improvement. Membership in the program is automatic upon employment with the company. Sentara offers weight-loss, smoking cessation and mammography services, and also provides a health education video library at no cost to employees. As would be expected for a health-care company, workers have access to registered nurses, tobacco cessation specialists and a registered dietitian.

“ We have been able to show outcomes related to our efforts,” says Terrina Thomas, Sentara’s director of Health and Preventative Services. And who better to prod employees in healthy compliance than a health-care company?