Attendees will learn about:
- How conditions like obesity and depression are incredibly linked, and how certain mental health conditions (even ADHD) can impact one's weight.
- The stigmas associated with bigger bodies and how that can impact someone's weight-loss journey.
- How a mental wellness program can address the stressors making one's weight-loss journey harder.
Transcript:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Deanna Cuadra (00:10):
All right, well good afternoon everyone, and welcome to session two, weight Loss and Mental Health, creating Holistic Benefits Beyond the Scale, where of course we'll be discussing how mental health impacts weight loss and what it takes to run a successful GLP one program. I want to first give a special thanks to our sponsor found for today's session. And just real quick, a reminder that SH RM recognizes the Health and Wellness Benefits Summit Professional development credits available to SHRM, CP or S SHRM SCP certification. So you can earn up to three professional development credits for virtual sessions. For each virtual session you attend. To receive credit, you have to stay the full hour, participate in audience engagement activities and complete and submit the evaluation form no later than Monday, December 16th. The evaluation form is in the attendee hub where you first logged in for the session.
(01:01):
If you participate in all three sessions, you only need to complete the form once. Certificates will be emailed by Horizon within two weeks. Alright, without further ado, let me introduce you to our wonderful panel here. We are joined by Dr. Tim Church, chief Medical Officer at Wonder Health, Charlotte Sping, regional people and culture director of the Americas at Valor. And Erica, sorry, just choking on her name. Sen, senior Benefits Consultant for risk services at Levit Group. I'm Deanna Cuadra, reporter, EVN, and I'll be your moderator. We have an hour long session ahead of us, including 15 minutes at the end for audience questions. We'll also pull the audience a few times to learn more about where you're at with your wellness benefits. Without taking any more time from our speakers, we'll go ahead and dive in.
(01:50):
Alright, so we should be hitting our first poll question for the audience. Does your company offer mental health support? You can say yes. You offer benefits like EAPs, wellness apps, virtual therapy, or expanded mental health coverage. No, you're not currently considering adding any mental health benefits to your mix. You are planning to, you can say no, but you are planning to add and then of course not. Sure. So we'll give you about 30 seconds here to choose. I know this might be a time of the year where you don't think about doing any more strategic benefits planning, but unfortunately forced to,
Erika Ensign (02:51):
Yes, the fourth quarter in the benefit world is rough.
Deanna Cuadra (02:55):
Alright, just seeing some results roll in here, we're looking like it looks like a majority, so almost 90% you guys do offer are saying, yes, we do offer mental health benefits. 7% say no, but you're considering it. 2% saying no, we don't plan to. And then two saying not sure. So it looks like a majority here are thinking about it. Not necessarily surprising, but this is definitely the place to be, whether you already have them or you're considering strategies around your mental health benefits. All right, let's go ahead and jump to our first panel question. As many of you know, GLP ones like Ozempic and wegovy are taking the spotlight and for great reason. There are these great advances in medication that are proving to lower blood sugar and promote weight loss. But of course for anyone struggling with diabetes or obesity, why is it harmful to assume GLP ones are one stop solution and I'll let our panel take it away here.
Dr. Tim Church (03:55):
I'll jump in. I've been doing this a long time and I used to be just a math guy, calories in, calories out, all be good and nothing could be farther from the truth. When you talk about weight, whether you're talking about weight loss, weight gain, weight, weight loss, maintenance, it's all mental health. It's literally where mental health begins and weight loss is, I don't know. And a lot of it starts with what are we asking food to do for us? And sometimes that's at a small level and sometimes at a big level, but it's a challenge because it's tough to address. You can't address weight without addressing mental health. You're destined to failure in the long run. In the short run, you're going to get weight loss, so it's just math. But over time, if you don't address the mental health issues and mental health issues is a little too heavy of a word, but the mental health aspects that are contributing to their weight, if you don't address that, you're not going to have long-term success.
(04:58):
I promised you that's going to happen with the GLP ones. I heard the most brilliant thing the other day. The individual said, we have more than enough prescribers. We don't have enough support. When you lose a lot, a lot, a lot of weight, a lot of things change in your life and some of 'em you're not ready for if you don't have a Sherpa, if you don't have somebody guiding you through that process. And those are all related to mental health. And we will unfold or unwrap or unpeel a lot of that as we go through. But in my mind, mental health and weight are different sides of the same coin.
Charlotte Spedding (05:34):
I like what you said there, Tim, about it's not just about the number on the scale. And I think from an employer's perspective at Ballor Hospitality, we certainly take the full holistic approach and we don't just focus on weight loss for our team, we focus on wellness when it comes to our team's mind, body, and soul as well. And we've seen a lot of success taking that varied diverse holistic approach and we've seen some great weight loss as a result of that as well. I think the weight loss just seems to follow when you take that varied approach. So for us this year we rolled out a healthy habits program and we focused on six key varied areas of wellness. So we focused on the benefits of hobbies. We had a nutrition month. We also focused on mental wellness, heart health, we had a cardiologist join and share some information with our team.
(06:29):
We had a kindness month that we focused on too. And then this month we're actually focusing on financial wellness. So of course within that there was weight loss focused activity. So for example, we did a steps challenge. We had over 700 people join that and we had some amazing weight loss as a result of that challenge and people have sustained that weight loss as well. But our main focus and our number one goal of the wellness program we launched was to make it as inclusive and as accessible and as diverse as possible so that everyone within our workplace community could gain some kind of benefit out of this wellness activity no matter who they were, their circumstances, et cetera. So I agree with Tim, not just about the number on the scale,
Erika Ensign (07:17):
And I think it's interesting that we were talking about this in the moment. I have a family member actually that a cousin of mine, she has, I don't know if she is now regretting that she has asked me to be an accountability partner for her, but she has said, I really got to get focused back to doing those things. And I know it's not just the physical part, she's working out and so forth. And she had mentioned actually to me this morning of I'm not not seeing the scale do anything. And I said, well sister, what do you do? One, I have two questions. One, you're lifting weights, so you're exchanging fat for muscle content so the density of your body is changing, so the composition of your body is changing. And I said, what does your clothes look like? And then the second thing was, what are you doing with your food knowing good and well, she's not changing that.
(08:11):
So back to Dr. Church's point of what are we wanting our food to do for us? So it's like there's so many components and I know that once we talk about all of these components, it could very well overwhelm people because you have the physical aspect, you have the mental aspect, you have all of these things and then you go, oh great, where do I start? And then people just give up and they just go give me, in this case, a lot of people are using this GLP one as the magic pillar. This just whatever, I don't want to do this, so just give me the easy button. And I think that there are some benefits to it, but I think from that benefit of using it as a vehicle to as a catalyst to get this going for you. So there's a lot of benefits to it, but just like doc said of this isn't sustainable, if you want weight loss, great, you're going to have that temporarily, but that's not going to be sustainable and that's not going to be long-term.
(09:13):
And as your body is going through these changes, you are having to change your mindset because your body is changing and what does that look like? What does that feel like? How do you show up in the world now not only to your family but in the workspace too. So it's a lot of different shifting and it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing. So with that being said, having those partners and resources available to your employees so that they know where to go and because they don't know what they don't know and they don't know how to ask for the things that is changing. And so it's okay that you don't know. We're here to navigate this with you. Let us hold your hand and walk you through this. And then having those people that are doing it with you. Of course, when my cousin reached out to me and said, I'm going to do it, and I said, great, that means I'm going to be doing this with you.
Dr. Tim Church (10:09):
What's interesting is both Charlotte and Erica, without even trying mentioned a lot of the keys to success from an organizational standpoint, comprehensive program, treat the human being, don't treat the number on the scale community both mentioned community, that's what that partner, that's what her friend's asking her to do. Environment. I mean, Charlotte gave a great example of an environment across the company. I don't care what your intervention is, if you've got a toxic environment, it's not going to work. And then adding to the environment is leadership. I mean clearly Charlotte's talking about this, the leadership's all in. That's the number one predictor I've seen in the employer space of success is when the leadership buys in and Eric's comment on the community to support the accountability within our program, one of the things we do, which is so important, we have this massive kind of social media space that we had before. There was LinkedIn, before there was Facebook, and people go to support each other. I've been doing this a long, long time. And the number one predictor of success at an individual level is how quickly you find that support partner. When you have that partner and you call it whatever you want, support partner, accountability partner, life partner. I don't care when you and that person or that group of people are working together, generally speaking, your likelihood of success is far higher.
Erika Ensign (11:38):
And I think that's a really great point because one of the things I have found, it's great to have the ease of availability in a community for people who don't even live in the same area as you, but it can also be a double-edged sword because there's too much information. And if you don't know enough, it's very difficult for individuals to sift through what is important and valuable information for them to gravitate to versus non-essential, or it might be good, but that's not in the stage of your journey right now. And then we get into this whole level, especially, I'm going to be stereotypical here for a second, and as females, it's very easy for us to get into that comparison demon mentality of like, oh, well they're doing all this. Well honey, they've been doing this for four years. They're not in this same chapter of this journey that you are.
(12:30):
Like grace. That is something that's been reoccurring in this last two years for me in the employer space. Even when Tim mentioned everything comes from the top, the leadership, well, guess what? Leaders are also humans. They also were on their own journey too. And it's okay to say that, look, I'm not this gladiator, whatever, we're doing this together. It's okay to humanize that. It's okay to show that human vulnerability in that and say, we're going to just do this together and figure this out. No one knows everything, but that's why you have those partners and vendors and resources available to you to go, look, we're in the trenches with you. We're not just saying, here it is, goodbye and good luck because we're living in this day in and day out too. We have to practice what we preach and guess what, we don't get it write all the time either.
Charlotte Spedding (13:23):
Yeah, and I think from an employer's point of view, when we're talking about is it all just about weight loss? No, it's not. And I think you can see your team members' confidence grow as their knowledge around nutrition and whole foods grows as their knowledge around getting active and exercising and learning new exercises, whether that's desk exercising or whether that's going out for a run or actually learning to lift weights. And you'll see those community hubs start to grow as well when you start talking about exercise. So I think is losing weight for your team, are they going to be motivated and happy by that perhaps. But I think you see even more confidence, even more happiness and potentially better performance as well if your team's confidence grows through knowledge on all those areas. Like I mentioned financial wellness earlier as well, that can add a lot of stress. And we're talking about mental health today. Financial wellness really plays into that. So if you as an employer can give your team knowledge on all these varied wellness aspects, I think you're going to see greater success and greater sustainability than if you just focus on weight loss alone.
Dr. Tim Church (14:38):
That's so spot on. It's these, I don't want to call 'em ancillary. It's these side things that really contribute to the weight loss, which we don't even think about. Like sleep bad, sleep habits, good luck with the loss program.
Charlotte Spedding (14:52):
You've
Dr. Tim Church (14:52):
Got to address sleep. If stress is an issue for you, you're not going to change your eating. So you can put out there these basic fundamental building blocks, but you have to tailor to the individual. And today's day and age, we put an enormous emphasis in our program on tailoring. Are you a stress eater? Are you an emotional eater? Do you want to lift weights? Do you want to go for a walk? Do you have type two diabetes? Do you have pre-diabetes? You should tailor off all those things because it just makes for a more efficient and more effective experience at the individual level. And that's in so many ways what Charlotte's talking about. They put these options out there and people are picking what matters to them because that's what it comes down to. What's going to help me today with what I'm dealing with today?
Deanna Cuadra (15:38):
And with that being said, I think this is perfectly segues into our next poll question, which is asking your audience, what type of programs are you interested in offering in the future? A being just GLP one, access, B being weight loss programs alongside other related wellness benefits, which can be any sort of the things that our expert here just mentioned, C, wellness benefits only, or D, none of the above. And again, we'll give you 30 seconds to fill in your answers here, but yeah, and I think as our speakers mentioned, the holistic approach can include so many different kinds of benefits from nutrition of course to mental health and of course getting active.
Dr. Tim Church (16:41):
I feel like we should have that.
Deanna Cuadra (16:43):
Yeah, I know. That's what it's playing in my head right now.
Dr. Tim Church (16:46):
Elevator
Charlotte Spedding (16:46):
Music.
Deanna Cuadra (16:53):
Alright, we're seeing our results here year. We have just 2% for GLP one access, but 87% said weight loss programs as well as other related wellness benefits. 4% said wellness benefits only, and then 7% said none of the above. Alright, so we're going to go ahead and go into the next question here, which is something I think our speakers already began to touch on. But what is the role employers play in ensuring people see long-term results in their weight loss journey?
Charlotte Spedding (17:27):
I'm happy to kick it off from an employer's perspective. So if you want a weight loss program that's going to be sustainable, it has to be diverse. And I know we've said that a few times. So as an employer, you got to get the basics right first. And that means are you creating and fostering an environment where team members have the opportunity to focus on their physical and mental wellbeing or are you overloading them with unreasonable workloads, tricky schedules, there's not a lot of flexibility in there. And ultimately leaving very little time for sustainable healthy living for your team. So you want to check your policies when it comes to leave and PTO and make sure that what's going to add value to their life, whether that's work-life balance, flexible schedules, et cetera. And then also within that as well, making sure that as an employer you're providing them with meaningful work.
(18:26):
There's a lot of mental health positivity that comes out of I'm making a difference in my company and I know that I'm making a difference because they're sharing results with me and I'm aware of how the work that I'm doing every day contributes to the success of the business. So I think in terms of mental wellness and sustainability, meaningful work, flexibility in schedules, not overloading them so that actually when they finish work, they're not feeling stressed and they have the time and the capacity to go work on their physical and mental wellness. And as well, sustainability is going to come from sprinkling in this wellness activity throughout the year. So rather than being an employer that says we're going to focus on mental wellness for six weeks out of the year, maybe that's in January after the festive season or that's in the summertime, right?
(19:20):
No, you want to be coming from a place where you have a sustainable strategic engagement calendar throughout the year and you are reminding your team about the importance of wellness and you're sprinkling in challenges and activities, information and knowledge to them. So that wellness is always staying at top of mind rather than it just being a short injection at one or two times throughout the year. So I think a lot of that from an employer's point of view will help with sustainability. And also thinking of ways that you're going to get this information to your team. So rather than just saying, we're going to email once a month on a Friday about wellness information, well email's great and that's one strategy, but what are your other strategies? Because not everyone checks their emails. So are you going to send wellness information through text messages? Do you have a platform?
(20:18):
We're launching and partnering with a company called Work Vivo next year, which is one central hub and community where we can share all of this information through an app with our team. So sustainability from an employee's perspective comes from diverse communication, getting the basics and then offering something that everyone is interested and can get involved in. And that's something different for everybody. So we did challenges, we challenged our team to cook with Whole Foods, try recipes they hadn't tried before, take pictures, send it to us. We had prizes we gave away, which were all wellness related and we also focused activity around, we did rest and restore. We've done financial bingo this month as well. So I think you've just got to come at it from a lot of different angles in order for it to be sustainable, weight loss, weight loss and wellness information for the team.
Erika Ensign (21:15):
And I would obviously echo all of those things. I know in our employer groups, oftentimes when they go from having no type of wellness incentive or program to starting the idea, to Charlotte's point, you want to have it varied and you want to have it meet all of the needs of all of your populations, which some of your groups have hundreds of employees plus their dependents. That's a lot of variability. And so ultimately looking at that, a lot of our HR teams get extremely overwhelmed very early on. And so oftentimes we say, look, what are we trying to accomplish? We just don't want people to get worse. The natural attrition of life is we're going to decline. So we just want to stop that where it's at. Would we like you to lose weight or would we like you to be in a healthy status?
(22:06):
Yes, absolutely. It's not going to happen in a day, it's not going to happen in a year. We just want you to stop getting worse. So some things it could be simple as changing something in your plan of like if you have a diabetic population is very prevalent in a lot of our groups. We just want to make sure that access to the medications and test strips and things are more accessible to you because if they don't have access to it, then they're not going to do it. Then that's just going to compound things. So sometimes wellness, this idea of wellness is really overwhelming for people when they think, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to exercise and eat. I'm going to have to exercise 60 minutes every day and I'm going to have to eat nothing but fruits and vegetables. It's not that it can be so many different things.
(22:48):
It could be simply making sure that you're checking your blood sugar often because you're not doing that or the death exercise that Charlotte mentioned. That's genius. So things like, okay, if you go out and go get fresh air on a break, get a 15 minute break and you just walk around the building or something, just doing those types of things, movement and activity and wellness is all incorporated around activity based. And to Tim's point earlier, the results will come by doing those activities. So if you're focusing on doing the things, the results will come naturally. And the challenge for individuals that want to get their now is instituting grace along the way, right? Consistency will compound, but you have to give yourself grace along the way, right? Sure. Work out for seven days in a row, but if you're so sore, then you can only walk instead of lifting away.
(23:47):
You know what I mean? You have to also listen to your body as it's changing and adapt accordingly. So you might need a rest day, you might need to sleep more than you're doing right now. But again, we're providing a lot of information and it could be very overwhelming. Just start small. Let's identify. A lot of times in our employer groups, I'll just sit in the conference room and I'm like, I will bring my jumbo post-it note or I'll write on a dry erase wall. And I'm like, let's just brainstorm things that you want to do. We'll write out ideas. And we go, okay, we can't institute all of these. So what's the one or two things that we can institute this year that we believe it's going to be the biggest impact for your organization that they will receive and feel like this is a benefit, my employer cares about me, and that you guys are also going to participate with them.
(24:35):
And we have groups that have employees all over the country, some of these truck drivers. So we can't expect them to do a whole lot of stuff maybe at home because they're not at home a lot. So it's like meeting your people where they are not only the employees, but even their families. So yeah, that's just great. So I guess my takeaway on that, all those words to say, don't get overwhelmed. There's a myriad of things and solutions that can be there, but we can start small and you rely on your resources to help you identify what's the most important thing, execute on it, find something measurable, and then we evaluate it. Did it work? Yes or no? Do we want to continue that yes or no? Or do we need to do something different?
Dr. Tim Church (25:20):
A unique aspect of us as a weight loss company is we were born in the employer space. We used to be owned by benefits consultants. We're never going to advertise at the Super Bowl. We're never going to be direct to consumer. We understand the employer, we understand consultants. It's what we do. And I got to tell you, I love Erica talking about Grace because what I would tell HR professionals right now is give yourself some grace. These are really challenging times. When we started in on it, there was that us plus two or three other legit weight loss companies and it was pretty easy to figure out which was the better fit for you. What happened post covid, everybody and their brother spun up a weight loss company. It's all digitally based. A lot of it's they don't have enough money to pay their bills for the next four months. And now we go into these meetings, they literally will say to us, you are our 10th weight loss vendor this month. And then they'll say things to me, I'm like, oh, you've been so misinformed. It's a challenging, challenging time to make fact-based decisions. I'll give you a great example. Any company that says we're going to get people off GLP ones within a year, that's a lie.
(26:34):
There's no science to support that. None. As matter of fact, the science is the opposite. And this has been going on since pre glp. This is not a GLP issue. We saw it with other weight loss programs decades ago. Your body will produce hormones which will make you eat more after you've lost a lot of weight. It's a fact you can't out white knuckle it. And further a year is insane because a lot of these programs, you're still actively losing weight in a year. So why would you take somebody off of a medication that's really working and they continue to work probably for a whole nother year. It's like saying, Hey, hypertension medication's, working time to take you off. Chemotherapy is working time to take you off. And so this is type of stuff we hear regularly and why I feel for the decision makers right now. It's so tough to make a well-informed decision with people saying such dramatic things to get your attention, really because their job and company depends on it. So I understand why they're saying it. It just doesn't help you as the decision maker.
Charlotte Spedding (27:46):
Yeah. I just want to touch on something that Erica said as well. Talking to businesses that are just getting into wellness programs, like Erica said, not being overwhelmed. My advice on that would be tap into the resources you already have. So for example, if you have an EAP program, they probably offer a lot more resources than you realize, and it's also about just getting the information to the team on programs that you have in place that they probably might not know about right now. So maybe start there in a place where it's like, what do we offer? What do we have? Let's just make sure for this year our team knows about all of those great benefits. We've communicated it really well. There's also so much information out there from the government as well. So if you go online and there's great websites that you can go to and they have brochures, flyers, prerecorded, podcasts, there's a lot of help and free resources out there as well that you can tap into as an employer that's just at your fingertips. But I just liked what Erica said, which was start small, start with what you have, get that information to your team and then build on it and get bigger.
Erika Ensign (29:05):
And if you don't have an EAP program, like a standalone one, a lot of your ancillary carriers like dental, vision, disability,
(29:13):
Have it even if they're not activated on your plan. So oftentimes if you have group life or disability, whether it's voluntary or company paid disability, it's already there. You just may not know it's there. It's not there. It can easily be activated. So to Charlotte's point, this isn't necessarily like if you don't have it, you may already have it. Just reach out to your ancillary carrier and say, Hey, do already have this on our program, or can we add it? I will say too, there's been oftentimes when we have acquired a group, a new client and their ancillary benefits already had it, and the group obviously had no idea that it even existed in the world. And I'm like, well, because it's a value add that everybody reads over and doesn't look at it. And so it's often missed and significantly underutilized. And so adding it, so you might already have it in your plan and you don't know.
Deanna Cuadra (30:14):
And thinking, and along the lines of EAPs, because I know we've been discussing a very holistic approach, and of course personal and professional life does impact your mental health. I want to then sort of zero in on mental health support specifically. And I want to ask, what is that relationship between healthy weight loss and specific mental health support? Being able to speak to someone or have continuous support around what you're thinking or experiencing while you're losing weight?
Dr. Tim Church (30:54):
That's not an easy question. I was like, who's going to take notes? There's really three buckets here, and we have to walk a fine line. We want to inform people, we want to educate people, we want to give people some insight, some mindfulness, some reflection, but we don't want to treat somebody who needs to be treated by a professional on a regular basis.
(31:19):
So I'll give you the three buckets. One would be you're dealing with stress, and we would offer some skills, which are basic fundamental skills about dealing with stress. And for a lot of people, that's all they need. Awesome. You had an issue, we were there for you and we helped you build some skills. Two is it's a little bit more than that. I might need a psychologist, I might need a psychiatrist. Might not be a lifelong thing, but you need a check-in. You've had probably a major event in your life recently, and you need more than just some skills to get through that. You need somebody to walk you through. And then the third bucket would be intensive treatment. And most of the time people are already plugged into something like that. But those three things, wherever someone lands, it's critical to the success of the weight loss program. You're just not going to help somebody lose weight who hasn't dealt, who hasn't dealt with their stress, or you're not going to help somebody lose weight who's maybe not being treated for their clinical depression. They're on a weight gain medication. So there's so much interplay between the two and addressing them both simultaneously. Absolutely. It's a tough needle to thread, but that's our task.
Erika Ensign (32:39):
And I will echo that too, to identify that. I mean, I would really parallel this to how we institute weight loss surgeries on any of our plans. So when we say, Hey, you will qualify for weight loss surgery, but you have to do a lot of mental identification. You can't just say like, well, my BMI is 47 and now I qualify and now I get it. Right. There's a lot of things that go into it. And so when we have instituted this or incorporated this in a plan, oftentimes it's our self-funded groups. We say, okay, we will institute this as a benefit, but the member has to meet these requirements, right? Yes, there's a physical aspect of it, but then there's also a mental and emotional aspect to it too, because Tim alluded to it or mentioned it very early on in this session of your body's changing.
(33:36):
You have to know how to navigate that emotionally as you're going through each stage. And I mean, I have tremendous amount of members that we have had where it's like, you would not think that a hundred pounds would change your whole mental psyche. It does. And so what does this body feel like? How do I feel like in this world now? How do I show up in this world? It's really bizarre. I use that word loosely and I apologize, but it's almost like you have a new identity and now you go, who am I in this world and how do I feel and how do I show up? And oh, guess what? I feel like I'm not equipped because this identity that I had before is now gone. And you almost have, you have to mourn and go through that old identity too so that you can make room for the new one, which I know sounds really drastic, but it is an emotional shift and you have to be able to have resources and support for that. And when you're ready for it, we don't want to be the parents and be like, you're not ready for weight loss. But I think that this GLP one, because of the drastic results of these people having the weight loss that they are having without having to have surgery, the mental psyche issues are still the same. So having that support there is,
Dr. Tim Church (35:04):
I'm sorry, you are so spot on. We learned all this from bariatric surgery. We learned all this, and massive weight loss is not new. We all keep acting like this just started with GLP one, and it's not with the huge amounts of weight loss, one of the number one issues we struggle with is expectations. When I lose this weight, I'm going to get a job promotion. When I lose this weight, my sister's going to talk to me again when I lose this weight, fill in the blank. They're not connected. Again, we've learned this from bariatric surgery. So when those expectations aren't met, that's where the whole self-doubt, depression and self-harm stuff comes in. But if you're coaching 'em along the way about realistic expectations about what this new life is like, about how to handle those friends who are afraid to go to lunch with you now generally things are going to turn out, but that's where that support comes in. You really, really, really need to support people in this journey.
Charlotte Spedding (36:00):
And I think from an employer's perspective, I would say look at it on a sliding scale. So like Tim said earlier, maybe on this side of the scale, a team member is struggling with their mental health, maybe it's related to weight loss and they need to speak to someone. And that's where you as an employee are not a therapist, but you need to have the resources in place to support them through an EAP program. For example, what I love about R so much is that it supports our team's immediate family members as well. So not only can the team member get free counseling, but they can also do collaborative counseling with their family members or their family members can have counseling too. So that's one end of the spectrum. But also, where can we support when a team member comes to us or we pick up on mental health?
(36:49):
So another thing I would touch on is making sure that whilst managers are not therapists, they do need to be well-equipped from an emotional intelligence point of view. And it's our job to make sure that managers are trained and given the right guidance on that so they can pick up on if someone in their team's mood is changing or they've noticed a difference in them from a mental wellness point of view, they know how to check in on them, they know what questions to ask, and they're well aware of the resources that their company has. And maybe those resources are a leaflet, a takeaway, some sort of reading. Maybe that's what a certain team member needs. Or on this end of the spectrum, maybe someone just needs some time off. Maybe they need a little bit of time to rest, some time to restore. They need a little bit of quality time with their family.
(37:42):
So again, that's where as an employer, you have to make sure you have those policies in place. You're flexible, but also you're fostering an environment where people aren't afraid to book PTO. They're not afraid to put sick time in. It's okay to do that. And we don't make our team feel uncomfortable or bad about doing that. So from a mental wellness point of view, where the employer comes in and if their weight loss is affecting that, I think sliding scale, we need to be equipped to know who to point in what direction and what resources that particular employee may need.
Deanna Cuadra (38:20):
Now we've mentioned some pretty valuable benefits. We've mentioned EAPs, we've mentioned even expanded leadership training. We've mentioned nutrition support. We've mentioned different things that essentially employers can do, even just expanding flexibility or PTO that will enable an employee to successfully lose weight. And I then want to ask, because I think one of the biggest challenges, of course, HR and benefit leaders is convincing C-suite that these benefits are worth adopting. And I want to then to our panel, how can you convince C-Suite that this is the next move? How do you convince them that GLP one support is good for business?
Charlotte Spedding (39:09):
Sure. I think from my point of view, this year we pitched a wellness program and it was adopted and mental wellness, physical wellness directly relates to company performance. So there's a lot of statistics that you can get on that, but there's a direct link to those two things as well as the things I talked about earlier, providing meaningful work, opportunities for development, progression, all of that. But I think ultimately the health of your team is going to impact the health of your business. So the more time and resources and investment that you put into your team's health, the more return you're going to see on that when it comes to your business and numbers.
Erika Ensign (39:51):
And from a financial perspective, instituting wellness programs and incentives do not affect your bottom line as much as one may think. So a lot of times I will say that when I got my degrees in wellness, I tell people it was before wellness was cool because it was not really a thing. And then it became a thing in the industry and it was like this buzzword that everybody used and all these massive corporations were doing it, but they were also able to institute millions of dollars into having onsite clinics and having all of these things. And then we have mid to small employers going, there's no way that we can do something like this at this magnitude, but things because perception is reality and people only know what they know. Wellness is so varied. And so Charlotte was mentioning there's things that you can do that are simple and small that don't actually require any more cost to your company than what's already been incurring.
(40:52):
In fact, you will find that it's going to somehow create more time because your employees are going to be more productive in the same amount of time that they are in the day. If you're helping equip them with the things that they need, and not only giving it to them, but showing them how, right? It's one thing to know what to do, but then it's a difference of how to institute this into their life. When they can figure out how to do that, then you will have lower absenteeism present. They will actually be more productive in the time that they are. So you will find that the retention in your population is going to exponentially grow along with your productivity in the same amount of time that they're there now. In fact, probably less time
Charlotte Spedding (41:36):
For sure. And you can see that savings in other areas too. Even accidents at work, if your team are not feeling as stressed and they are physically and mentally well, those accident rates are going to go down and you can see that and you can measure that, and that's a tangible saving for the business. Same on, you can see it through turnover. If your team feel like they're supported from a physical and mental wellness point of view, they're more likely to stay with you. They're more likely to want to grow their career with you as well, because they feel like you are invested in them and their wellness. So a lot of those, like Erica was saying, it's not as expensive as you may think. And actually there's a lot of positive benefit that you can tangibly demonstrate to your C-Suite leaders.
Deanna Cuadra (42:30):
Alright, well before we head into audience q and a, I want to go ahead and have our last poll question here asking, what's stopping you from establishing or expanding wellness benefits and programs? Are you overwhelmed by vendors? Are you afraid of how costs will impact your budget? Which is very fair given healthcare costs going up a super crazy amount. Once again, are you not convinced your employees will utilize it? And then of course, maybe another reason here, again, we'll give you 30 seconds to respond, pretend that elevator music is playing
Erika Ensign (43:10):
For us. Tim, you can pick all of the answers.
Deanna Cuadra (43:14):
Yeah, that's true. Other could also just be all above.
Erika Ensign (43:17):
They're like everything. All of the things.
Deanna Cuadra (43:25):
Yeah. I do think even just covering the space as a reporter, the surge in vendors has actually been crazy. See, just in the last three years.
Erika Ensign (43:34):
Yeah, like I said, it's a double-edged sword of information overload. And when you don't know enough of a particular topic or industry, it's impossible to decipher what's important versus not important. It's hard to filter out the noise, so it's overwhelming. And then if it's overwhelming, people just say, I'm not doing it. I'm done. I'm out. Too much of a good thing is still a bad thing. So they're like, I'm tapping out. I don't have time for this. So I'm out.
Deanna Cuadra (44:06):
We have our poll results. It looks like 6% say overwhelmed by vendors, which may be a good sign of we're learning to navigate this slowly but surely. We do see a majority, of course, 50% are saying they're afraid of how costs will impact the budget. Very fair. C, we're seeing not convinced employees would utilize it at 23% and then 21% is other. We want to now give our audience an opportunity to, well ask our panel anything, but of course, especially surrounding your concerns around these programs. So I will go ahead and be reading any audience questions. Let's look over here. I'm jumping around one second. Alright, I'll go ahead and start with this question. Would it be better to frame weight loss as a secondary benefit to the greater goal of physical, emotional and mental strength going to the gym or engaging whatever intervention might be more about learning to live outside your comfort zone in a healthier way? Alright, I will open up this question to the panel.
Dr. Tim Church (45:18):
I'll jump in. I've only been thinking about this for 25 years. People will say they want to exercise more. People will say they want to eat healthier. People want to say they sleep better. They won't sign up for those programs, plus or minus people will sign up for a weight loss program. It is ingrained in our DNAI don't get it. So what we do is we use weight loss as the Trojan horse, come on in, we're going to help you lose some weight, but we're also going to help you sleep better. We're going to get you moving more. We're going to talk about stress, we're going to talk about resilience. So it's a really good question, but at the end of the day, there are certain power words with people. People love the word metabolism. Weight loss is one of those words. Weight holds a really special place in our society. It's not quite religion, it's not quite politics, it's not quite money. Somewhere in between.
Erika Ensign (46:18):
I said it's weighted heavy.
Dr. Tim Church (46:20):
Yeah, exactly. So you can spend these programs up, but generally people aren't going to step in without a huge incentive. If it's a weight topic that's connected to these other things, you're more likely to get people to step in. That's my experience.
Erika Ensign (46:39):
Well, if you think about it, to Tim's point, words matter. So if you're looking at something of a weight loss, a gym membership or I don't know, free groceries at Whole Foods or something, weight loss is a result, exercise is an activity and so is food. So you're comparing three different things. So on that point, Tim said, when a member is looking at something, an employee's looking at something, they're like weight loss. That is a direct result of something. Sure, you can tell me how to get there, but that's ultimately what I want. It's difficult to look at something and go, oh, I get a free gym membership. Well, guess what? I don't know what to do when I step into the gym. I don't know what I'm going to be doing. I don't know what kind of weights I'm supposed to be doing. Also, I'm kind of embarrassed because I want to lose weight, so I don't want to go in there and look like an idiot or food.
(47:37):
Great, cool. I can go in here. What do I get? I don't even know what Whole Foods is. How do I know what to identify on? There's this nutrition facts on every label of food. What is appropriate for me is not going to be appropriate for someone else. And so I think that to Tim's point, words really matter because they hold this meaning to people, right, wrong or indifferent, they feel differently. But yes, incentives are obviously very motivating for people. You're going to get those people who are kind of on the cusp of like, well, I don't really want to do it, but I guess if you're going to give me this, I guess I'll go. And then you're just going to always have your early adopters of, yeah, cool. Let's do a challenge.
Charlotte Spedding (48:27):
For us, I would say our biggest hook this year were our giveaways. So I know not every company's going to have the funds for this, but we've given away about $10,000 worth of wellness prizes to our team this year. We came out the gate with some big exciting prizes for the team. So we gave away Apple headphones and Beats headphones and things that were brands that people knew something exciting. And so for them it was like, I'm going to win some Apple headphones. But by the end of the year, we wanted to get them to a place where they're using those headphones when they're exercising. And that was a journey to get to. But first it was like just hook them, hook them with a prize. And then all of our giveaways related to wellness. So bikes, splendors, gym attire, gym bags. And like Erica said, maybe at the beginning stage, they're not a hundred percent sure.
(49:22):
They might feel a little bit nervous about wearing that gym gear if they're not used to going to the gym. But if you have a program where you're educating your team, it's diverse. There's a lot to it. Hopefully they'll get to a place where actually those prizes that they're winning, they're putting to great use through wellness. So I would say that's been one of our most successful things we've done this year is the giveaways. It captured their attention. That's what I'll say. It captured their attention. And then like Tim was saying, then we can say, oh, by the way, we want to talk to you about sleep hygiene. Oh, by the way, we want to talk to you about Whole Foods and nutrition as well, because as soon as those giveaways were there, it was the hook. So that would be my advice as well.
Erika Ensign (50:02):
And some vendors already have the prizes in a box. So if you
(50:08):
Initiate with a, we'll call it a wellness vendor of some kind that has, okay, here's the program that you want to institute. They already have those prizes embedded based on the activities. So to Charlotte's point, you may not have a $10,000 budget to go and buy these elaborate gifts. Well, you don't have to. Some of these vendors already have it instituted in there, incorporated rather into that program where the members are getting, and then it's coming unquote directly from the vendor. But you position it as you are providing this to your employee base just like you are providing a group life benefit. But it so happens to be underwritten by Guardian or Lincoln or whatever. But we're providing that to them.
Dr. Tim Church (50:51):
We just did that this year. The key to incentives is to do incent behavior. You already alluded to this, Erica. If you incent the behavior, the outcomes will come. So that's what we do. We incent behavior. You want 'em to escalate, you want 'em to build over the course of the time so that they build up their points, the prizes that become available. Incentives. I've used incentives for a long, long time. Incredibly powerful tools, but man, they can be so tricky to dial in. It's an active process. But yeah, they're a powerful behavioral tool when part of a larger behavioral construct.
Deanna Cuadra (51:36):
Alright, and we actually have a lot of questions. This popped up so I don't think we'll get to all of them, but I'll go to this one here. Could you share some insights into the trends you're observing in 2025 regarding weight loss and mental health? Yeah, so essentially what do you see
Dr. Tim Church (51:54):
On the
Deanna Cuadra (51:55):
Horizon? Yeah, chaos.
Dr. Tim Church (51:56):
Chaos,
Deanna Cuadra (51:57):
Yeah. And then they also ask, have you noticed an increase in these conversations compared to last
Charlotte Spedding (52:01):
Year? From my point of view, I won't touch on the weight loss piece, but from a mental health point, I'm seeing a trend where our teams are more comfortable talking about it. They're more comfortable being open about this topic a lot more so than say five, 10 years ago, which is good for community support and people hearing stories similar to theirs. I think all of that is great. So I think a trend I'm seeing is it's becoming more of a comfortable space to have conversations around.
Dr. Tim Church (52:43):
I think that's really important actually. I think it's a remnant of covid and quarantine, which is a good thing, a good thing. We used to hide the fact that we were a weight loss company based in mental health. Now we lead with a weight loss based. We couldn't talk again, Okie for people before. Now everybody wants to talk about it. For weight loss itself, 2025 is going to be absolute chaos. We are going to see a lot of major companies go out of business in the weight loss space. Their burn rate's too high, they're not bringing in the customers. They're great marketing, not great at delivering outcomes and too expensive. So we're going to have a bunch of big failures. This compounding thing, whatever it is, it's not going away. It's just a matter of how much of the market share it takes and how we're all going to adjust to it.
(53:35):
I have a funny feeling there's going to be a reinvention of compounding in general. No one wants to hear that, but this is what I'm seeing. I'm not a proponent of this. I'm just saying it is what it is. And I think unfortunately I don't see a lot of price pressure on these guys to lower their prices for the big ones. So I think we're going to have another year of really high prices and I think it's going to put a lot of pressure on employers to make tough decisions. We're hearing this every day. So do you go with a behavioral program without access to the medications? Do you go all in and do medications with it or do you do something in between where you have a behavioral program that supports people on medications? We do all three because we think the market needs all three. So unfortunately, I don't think from a weight loss perspective, anything settles down in 2025. I actually think it's going to get a little bit more complicated, which is why you need a nimble platform, which we've worked so hard to create.
Erika Ensign (54:33):
And I've actually, in our groups, we've seen more and more and just personally too out in public. So the increase in things over the years of testosterone injections and whether it's injections or the pellets or things that are happening at the site of wellness or these clinics, vitamin infusions and stuff like that, those things aren't covered on a health plan, but yet people are going crazy going and doing it, and they are paying out of pocket for it. We are now seeing that or have been seeing that in the past year now with these GLP ones. So what happens is, oh, well it's not covered on my plan because it's a thousand dollars, but I can go to this wellness clinic over here and it might be compounded from another pharmacy, but I can get it for $350. That cost of convenience for that member is worth that to them.
(55:33):
So to Tim's point, I don't see it either going, I don't see it going away either. And then because it's not, there's not a lot of restrictions or requirements mandated against that because guess what? It's outside of the plan. These are just consumers going to, they're going to the freaking grocery store and buying something off the shelf. Now, do they do labs and blood work to make sure that that patient is appropriate to have it? Sure, but the point is it's accessible without a prescription. And so these people will go and get it just like they will go and get vitamin infusions just like they will go and get Botox even if it's not covered on their plan for migraines and so forth. And so to Tim's point, it's not going to go away. So how do we incorporate that or identify that It's different when you have a self-funded case, when you have the data to justify anything that you're making.
(56:26):
Like, ooh, it makes sense if we're going to institute this over here or it's going to make sense if we don't institute this over here and we just rely solely on the behavior changes and we just exclude it all together. Because the idea of a health plan being provided by your employer is to create something that is a benefit to them. While it is sustainable for both the members and the organization, health insurance is not designed to be a vehicle in which you get it and you don't make claims on it and you don't use it. It's meant to be consumed. So you need to build it in a way that's consumable, right? It's not like auto insurance where you get it and you're like, I don't want to file a claim because my insurance rates are going to go up, but we use our health plan, it ain't nothing.
(57:10):
And we were like, why are the rates going up? I don't understand. And so creating that plan design, and that's also incorporating too, when you are doing these wellness benefits or wellness programs and you're instituting that, you're learning your people. And so that also will help create the changes that are needed on your health plan as you are going down the journey of GLP one is just an example, but maybe it's something else that they need. Maybe there is a local clinic in the area that people are really wanting to go to and they're providing in centers of excellence for your folks and they're doing all the things that they need to. Great. Let's incorporate those providers into that so that people have access to care for sustainable financial perspective for the members and the plan. I'm going off a little on that, sorry, but I disagree with Tim. Short story.
Deanna Cuadra (58:09):
Alright, I think that was the last question we had time for. I want to take the opportunity to thank all our panelists for a really great conversation. I hope this kind of offered some, well, I believe it did offer some insight on that relationship between mental health and weight loss support. It's not an easy topic. It's definitely not one that's easily definable, but it is something, there's different ways you can definitely, from what we've learned, there's different ways you can accomplish that for your workforce. I just want to remind the attendees to leave the session room and then return to attendee hub to access or CPE form. And of course the next session link. I do hope you attend the next session. We'll be focusing on LSAs. Alright, well I think that's all I have on my end. Again, just thank everybody You have a good rest of your day, weekend, and happy holidays. Thank
Dr. Tim Church (59:08):
You. Thank you. Bye y'all.