What do Billy Beane and Corporate Wellness have in common? For those that are not familiar with Billy Beane, he is the General Manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team. There was a book written and movie recently released (Moneyball) that detail his trials and tribulations to change what tools were used to build a major league baseball team. He was tasked with creating a winning team in a small market while going up against the ranks of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox with their large payrolls.
So what made Billy’s situation unique is one that every company faces when instituting a wellness program:
Budget – He could not compete for the high priced veterans to lead his team, so he had to get creative to find talent that was affordable and could produce on the field. In the current economic environment, companies are keeping a careful eye on the budget and are less inclined to introduce a new program unless they can be certain it will have a payoff.
Overcome convention – What he proposed was revolutionary and went against 100 years of tradition by using different statistical measures to determine what players to select. Today’s wellness program’s statistical measures focus on BMI or Cholesterol, which can be misleading indicators for overall health. They can actually backfire by mandating specific levels to achieve for premium/deductible reductions as they can cause additional problems in the form of mental stress when these levels don’t change despite taking corrective action. Lesser used indicators such as body fat percentage and fitness assessments can provide a better measuring stick for individual progress.
Culture change – In order for his philosophy to succeed, he had to institute it throughout the entire organization from the rookie league team on up through his major league coaches, players, and management team. In the same vein, wellness is not something that should be isolated and solely practiced at home. From the president all the way through the organization chart, wellness must be woven into the fabric of the corporate culture for results to be visible to the employee and the company.
Deep down, everybody has the desire to be healthy, but small barriers get in the way of achieving this success. For wellness to succeed, it does not need to be expensive. With a little bit of creative programming, wellness initiatives can become part of the company culture and create sustainable habits for the individual.
Postscript – Oakland Athletics
Billy had one-third the payroll ($40 million vs. $120 million) of the top teams to work with when searching for talent. Based on his willingness to buck convention and not throw up his hands in frustration, his teams accomplished the following during the recent decade:
- MLB record of 20 straight wins in one season
- Three trips to American League Championship series in 6 years
- Three second place finishes those other years
- No World Series wins, but a consistent winner over the last decade with limited resources.