If enough wellness promoters keep insisting wellness fails, at some point we are going to have to believe them.
Usually we publish our own arguments against wellness. But today I posted a blog on Insurance Thought Leadership (ITL) that sums up the wellness promoters‘ arguments against workplace wellness instead. You can read it in its entirety here. It’s a bit “straighter” than our usual biting wit, since ITL, like Quizzify, is a standalone corporate enterprise rather than an individual hobby.
And TSW is indeed a personal hobby of mine (and Vik’s), not a cash cow. The second most frequent question* I get is: “How do you make money off this site?” The answer is I usually don’t, but almost every time a company sues a vendor or consultant, I become the expert witness, which is profitable — and, I might add, invariably successful. Cases never even get to trial. Why? Well, you’ve seen how smart these people are in everyday life. Trust me when I tell you they don’t exactly grow a brain during depositions. Plus they aren’t allowed to lie.
*The most frequent question I get is: “How did you get to be so tall?”
Highlights of the ITL piece, in case you’ve worn out your click-through button from all our other blog posts, would be as follows. For the most part, they are just a summary of what you already know:
- Ron Goetzel says most programs fail. (This is new as of last Friday.)
- Michael O’Donnell says most programs fail.
- Michael O’Donnell’s own meta-analysis says, when measured using an RCT design, programs fail
- Michael O’Donnell also offered a math lesson showing that employees working out during business hours fails to save money. It actually costs $5200/employee/year.
- The HERO Report shows a hypothetical of program economics, failing.
- At HERO’s insistence, we substituted more realistic numbers from Mr. Goetzel…and dramatically increased the loss.
- The most recent award-winning program, McKesson, admits it failed (as most of the previous award-winning programs did).
- The vendor that insists companies should publicly report how many fat employees they have, couldn’t get its own employees to lose weight.
- The most expensive, presumably gold-plated, program failed. (And that’s before adding the $500/employee program expense.)
Further, the promoters are starting to admit that maybe, just maybe, I am — as Michael O’Donnell eloquently put it — not an idiot.
