Myth-busting Employee Wellness Program Strategies

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast. I’m Dr. Bradford Cooper. And normally I’m your host. But today we’re featuring a special crossover episode with Project HR, where they had me as their guest to discuss the keys to an engaging organizational wellness program. We thought it would be of interest both to those who may be involved in improving their own organization’s health and wellness program, as well as coaches who maybe you’re looking to work with organizations either now or in the future. Now, speaking of health and wellness coaches, if you are a health and wellness coach or you support health and wellness coaches in some way, you likely already know about the Rocky mountain coaching retreat and symposium, which takes place in beautiful Estes park, Colorado each September. Well, we’re happy to announce, we’ve spoken with the venue and we are a go for this year’s event. With that said, we get it. Some of you want to be there. It’s been on your calendar for a long time. You’re super excited, but you don’t know if your company is going to be restricting travel, or you don’t know if you’re maybe going to be nervous still about traveling at that point. Good news. If you register and for whatever reason, can’t make it, we have a special option for you in that case. I’m not going to spend time on the details here because a lot of our listeners, are not coaches, so they’re not eligible to attend, but you can check out the details under the retreat tab at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com and always feel free to reach out to us Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. If you have any questions at all, either about the retreat or anything coaching related. Now let’s join Project HR for this special crossover episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Podcast.

Beth

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to project HR. The podcast dedicated to building better workplaces. I’m Beth, your host. And by now we all know that employee health and wellness is vital to the success of any organization. Workplace wellness efforts can improve employee productivity, increase morale, lower employee stress, lower absenteeism, increase retention, and they might even ultimately reduce healthcare costs for employers, someday. The trick has been implementing effective longterm wellness strategies that work for both the organizations and their individual employees. Our guest today has made employee wellness his life’s work, and he’s here to talk with us a little about how to make workplace wellness stick. Joining us today is Dr. Bradford Cooper, the CEO of US Corporate Wellness and co founder of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. Bradford, it’s so good to have you with us.

Dr. Cooper

Well it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.

Beth

Yeah. I’m excited to talk to you. Okay. So I’m going to ask your opinion here first. Workforce wellness has been a topic of concern for longer than we realize. We’ve just changed focus over the years. What started decades ago from standard occupational safety concerns expanded in the 20th century to improve physical health habits, such as encouraging employees to lose weight or quit smoking. And today it’s expanded even further redefining wellness to include psychological, social, and financial health. In addition to physical health, needless to say, this is a pretty tall order for companies to fill. Do you think it’s feasible for companies to encourage wellness on all of these fronts?

Dr. Cooper

The way I would first respond to that question is the company is not going to be able to make anyone do anything. The whole idea of autonomy, if we look at the literature, if you look at the research on behavior change, it doesn’t happen because you come to me and say, Brad, you need to do this. And here are the three things you need, you’re going to have to utilize to do that. That is, I’ll nod my head, I’ll smile. I’ll be like, yeah, boss. Sure. That sounds good. And then as soon as you turn away, I’ll be like, Oh my gosh, who is she? What is she doing? And unfortunately, that’s the way we’ve approached wellness for too long. We’ve come in, we’ve, I’m a physical therapist. And so I grew up, I haven’t treated patients in 15 years, so don’t ask me any hard questions. But I grew up treating in an era where evaluate and treat was the goal. A patient would come in, you would evaluate, and then you would provide the treatment. You would give them the answer. You would, you would do something with them that would allow them to get over the hump. And I think that doesn’t work in wellness. If you tell me what to do, it doesn’t work. But if you give me the tools, if you give me the ability, if you give me the opportunity to determine the areas that I want to build on, and then the resources to do that, the support to do that, the encouragement to do that, wow. Now we’re going to kick some butt because, because that’s what behavior change is all about. It doesn’t happen because you tell me to do it, ask any husband, wife who has found that, maybe not to work, but it works really well if I’m fully engaged and it’s important to me. So the autonomy piece is critical. And I, and I think to maybe shift that question a little bit, can employers help employees or team members move toward better? Yes, yes they can. But if they push them to a specific better, then it’s going to fall flat. Does that make sense?

Beth

It absolutely does. And it kind of reminds me of something that one of my friends used to say, she said, don’t should on yourself. Don’t should on yourself. Why, why do I want to go through a laundry list of what I should be doing when I could go through what could make me better and what could benefit me? And it kind of puts the ball into my court. And that is something that I would respond to way faster than should.

Dr. Cooper

Right? Absolutely.

Beth

Okay. So in the introduction, we kind of went through a list of how employers benefit from improving workplace wellness, but how do these initiatives impact employees other than their own improved general health?

Dr. Cooper

The real benefits are that every single one of your employees who engages fully in this, their life will be better. That’s, think of what that does to your organization. Think of what that does to your outcomes, productivity, sick time, I mean all the aspects. No, there’s not a single HR person out there that will argue if my employees lives are better than they are better employees. That’s just how it is. And that’s, a good wellness program doesn’t say, get your BMI to X, a good wellness program says let’s make your life better. And when your life is better, these other things will happen along with it.

Beth

Yeah, it is so obviously all encompassing. Relationships are better. Financial health is better. Meaning, I mean, if all of that stuff is, is positively increasing then yeah, your, your day to day, like I’m going to be excited to go to work. Yeah. 100%. Okay. Well question for you. Do you think the presence of a workplace wellness initiative tells an employee something deeper about their employer and if so, why?

Dr. Cooper

The style, the approach of a workplace wellness program absolutely tells you what, what is happening behind the scenes of the employer. If it’s a program that says, okay, everybody line up, get tested, fill in your numbers. And then we’re going to tell you all you sinners and make you wear Scarlet letters on your name tags, because X, Y, Z is inappropriate. And until you fix it, then you’re going to be penalized. Yeah, that tells me a lot about the employer. If on the other hand, the employer says we all got issues. Like every single one of us have issues. And every single one of us has opportunities to make tomorrow, we like to use this little term hashtag better than yesterday. And so every single one of us, has this opportunity to be better than yesterday to pursue better than yesterday, to take an opportunity to move toward better than yesterday. If we do that, if my employer is helping me do that in a, in a way that’s meaningful to me and not just the employer that tells me a lot about that employer.

Beth

Absolutely. Okay. We’ve, we’ve learned a lot about workplace wellness programs over the years with general debates over whether or not they’re working. What do you see as the primary challenges facing employers looking to implement wellness programs in their workplaces?

Dr. Cooper

I think it’s the temptation to check boxes. And what I mean by that is an HR person may be assigned in quotes to put together a wellness program. So they go out and they look different options and they say, Oh, well, the traditional route is we’re supposed to do biometrics first and a health risk assessment, and then set up some modules that walk them through how to fill in the gaps that they have in their life. And that just doesn’t do much. Like, I don’t know how you’re feeling right now talking to me and hearing that, but I doubt you’re going, Oh, wow. That would be awesome. So you’re going to tell me where I’m not very good, and then you’re going to give me some pre conceived things that worked for someone somewhere out there with some history that’s completely different than me. And I’m going to go through those and check boxes that I did them. And then I’m going to get credit. That is so cool. Like my life’s going to be so amazing after this. NO!

Beth

Yeah. That’s not motivating at all.

Dr. Cooper

No, no, no. You listen to it and you go really seriously? Now there’s nothing wrong, biometrics can be very valuable. I’m not down talking biometrics. Health risk assessments are wonderful. We use those in certain, certain circumstances, but you need to use them with the overall strategy of, we want to create a meaningful program. Something that matters to the employee, not just the employer.

Beth

Yeah. Okay. So question for you. How much of the disappointment in wellness programs comes from unreasonable or unsustainable expectations?

Dr. Cooper

I would say none of it, if we accurately calculate expectations to reality, I think what happens too often is we set up expectations and then we don’t appropriately measure it. So for example, you say, we want to, we want to look at medical claims and we look at the data and we say, Oh yeah, it didn’t really change. Well, let’s see if it changed. What, of the people that were meaningful participants. So I’m not talking about people that filled out an HRA. I’m talking about people that actively participated had, let’s say at least four personal coaching sessions during that year. Of that group, how many people showed a decrease in X? Sick time, turnover. If you have a, a productivity per FTE, if you have a, a medical again, medical claims, there can be a lot of variables there. So you need to take out your outliers, both with your participants and your not because if I get in, a bike wreck, it had nothing to do with my wellness program or not wellness program, I just got in a bike wreck.

Dr. Cooper

So yes, if you identify, I think what happens is it’s, it’s statistical, gamesmanship where the person who comes in saying, I don’t really like this model. So let me show you why it’s not working and you get the number you want. I mean, that’s, you see this with all the factors in health and wellness now with people saying, well, this diet works great. And here’s my statistics. Nah, that’s not statistical analysis. That’s a little case study that you’re playing with. So same thing with wellness. We’ve got to take the data in the bigger picture. We have to analyze it appropriately and not pretend like the person who checked five boxes is a wellness program participant.

Beth

Let’s talk about strategies to make these wellness efforts stick. We’ll get into the details about your specific programs later on. But speaking generally, what do you think helps make corporate wellness efforts succeed?

Dr. Cooper

It’s simple answer. Bring it down to the individual. And I think there, there are little tests that you can do with this. Think of your most extreme employees. Think of the fittest, craziest this is your yoga instructor, Ironman triathlete, vegan. What would help them? What would engage them? And then think of the other extreme. The person says I could care less. Like I don’t want to even look at a wellness program. How can we engage, engage those two people? And then the other question that always intrigues me is ask yourself, am I participating? So you’re the HR director. You’re the HR manager. You’re the HR executive and you’re not participating. Like how good is this program? If the person that picked it out is not even engaged in the program, we must have missed something somewhere.

Beth

Well, and that too is like a matter of leadership. Like if you’re going to provide this for the company, a good means of leading this effort would be that you also participate.

Dr. Cooper

Absolutely. And you don’t have to be perfect. We’re not looking for leaders to be perfect with their health and wellness. We’re looking for leaders who care. And if you care and frankly, the authenticity of you struggling as much as anybody else can be more valuable than, Oh yeah, you run 50 marathons a year. That’s not motivating, that doesn’t help me. That’s, I want someone that I can relate to. And so we’re not looking for leaders to be perfect with their health and wellness. We’re looking for leaders who care and are trying and fall flat sometimes.

Beth

Right? Yeah. Because that is relatable. We can relate to imperfection. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what are your thoughts on the use of incentives to encourage workplace wellness?

Dr. Cooper

A lot of discussion around this and my answer is relatively simple. You’ve got to have them, but it’s a little bit different than the typical reason for you’ve got to have them. You’ve got to have them to get folks to engage and try it out and, and, and give it a shot. Too often, incentives are set up again to identify rewarding box checking. That’s not what we’re looking for. We want to engage. We want to use the incentive to engage people, to try something that will be meaningful if they give it a shot. Now, no one listening to this, well, maybe a couple of people listening to this, wake up in the morning and say, you know, I would love to talk to a wellness coach today using that as an example. They’re like, a wellness coach? I mean, most cases they seriously are saying, a wellness coach? Like, what’s a wellness coach? I don’t know what this thing is. What are we doing here? So the incentive, the purpose of that incentive is to say, look, we get it. You don’t probably know what a wellness coach is. And if you do, maybe you had a bad experience, cause it was some, you know, call center and the person was interrupting your day at some random time. And they want to tell you to eat kale. So we get it that maybe you’ve had this bad past experience or no past experience. So we’re going to use our incentive to have you give it a shot. So here’s some time off or here’s some cash in your, your health savings account or here’s some literal cash to try out the coaching. Now, if the coaching stinks, if it’s not personalized, if it’s not meaningful, then I probably won’t continue. But if you incentivize that first two or three sessions for me to give it a try, if the coach is good and by the way, anybody thinking about coaching, there’s a thing out there, and maybe you want to link to it. It’s NBHWC it’s national board for health and wellness coaching. It has nothing to do with us. It is the national exam, the national board certification for wellness coaches. If the organization providing your wellness coaching does not have coaches trained in an accredited program by NBHWC, start running the other way. So that’s the key.

Beth

Okay. So what’s the difference between offering wellness activities to employees and creating a culture of wellness within your organization?

Dr. Cooper

Think of a Venn diagram. They’re probably over overlapping a little bit, but the, the culture says we want to be an organization where individual meaningful wellness, at again, the individual level matters that it’s supported that it’s, it’s built into what we do. It’s a, it’s part of our DNA. Whereas providing activities is, well, frankly, in most cases, it’s just throwing money at something that you don’t need to throw money at. Like quick example. So, health club memberships, that that typically is a big, it’s a common thing. People are like, Oh, we want to offer free health club memberships for our employees. Really? Like, that’s awesome if you literally just want to spend money on people that are already working out. But the data’s very clear. The reason people aren’t working out is not due to the monthly membership, it has nothing to do with it. I saw a study last year that showed about 2% of people, they for a month or two, if they got a free membership, they’d start going. But when you get six months in, it’s a ridiculously small number. So if you’re wanting to reward people that already do it and you want to do that through free health club membership, I’m all for it. If you want to give me a free health club membership, that’s awesome. Thank you very much. And that’s, and there’s an argument for doing so because you’re rewarding people that are already making good choices. So if you, if you understand, that’s the reason for doing that, great. But if you think giving out free health club memberships is going to increase the number of people pursuing healthy lifestyles, you are kidding yourself. There’s no, there’s no correlation between A and B. A wellness program is all about behavior change. If we’re simply supporting what’s already happening, that’s great. But that’s called a benefit program. It’s not called a wellness program.

Beth

Yeah. And that’s not individually personalized either. And that is, I think that that’s where you’re going to get the magic is when you cater it down to this specific person. Yeah.

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Help them make tomorrow a little bit better than today.

Beth

What’s that hashtag again?

Dr. Cooper

Better than yesterday.

Beth

Yep. I love it. Hashtag better than yesterday. Okay. So to build a culture of wellness, we’ve already talked about the gym membership, but does a company have to invest in, let’s say even building a corporate gym or hiring full time yoga instructors, or is this something that can be done on a budget?

Dr. Cooper

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We’ve even had companies come to us and say, we’ve got this much. What’s the best way to spend it? You know, you can reverse engineer if you want. What I’ve encouraged people to do is start with the most meaningful. And then add from that, don’t start with the easiest. Don’t start with the most common, don’t start with the one that’s just out there on the web, on the internet the most. Start with what would be the thing that will have the biggest impact. Again, we offer the full suite of stuff. So all the things that you see out there, but if somebody comes to me and says, Brad, here’s how much we’ve got, should we, should we start with biometrics or HRA’s or web portal or group challenges or coaching? So again, we offer all these things, but if they’re asking that question, which one on a limited budget, what do I start with? My answer is super easy. Like, I don’t even think about it. It’s start with coaching because of the, even, even if let’s, let’s say you’ve got a ridiculously small budget and you can only afford a couple of sessions a year with your employees. Still two, well done coaching sessions during an entire year is not enough to move the dial. Let’s not kid ourselves, but if you compare it to lunch and learns or health club memberships or HRA’s, or whatever, it’s not even close. At least you get the starting point and it gives you something to build on. And then maybe down the road you add in these other layers of the target.

Beth

Well, speaking of lunches, should companies rethink how food is approached in the workplace from snacks to business lunches, should everything be seen through a healthier lens?

Dr. Cooper

Okay. We got back to the should thing. We always want to be careful with that word, but would it be valuable to put a greater emphasis on healthy food? Absolutely. And you can, you can do this without jamming it down people’s throats. We don’t need to be the food police. So you can start smarter. You can say, if we’re serving food as part of a meeting, we’re going to serve healthy food. Now I didn’t say perfect food. It doesn’t mean there can’t be, you know, something that actually tastes good on there. I’m just saying pizza, really? And, and by the way, I love pizza, but at every meeting, that’s, what message are you sending here? So, yes, there’s a huge value to sending that message and saying, if we’re buying lunch, it will be healthy, not perfect, but healthy. And then you have a description of that. It doesn’t have to be salad. There are many alternatives to that, but there’s some pretty darn good salad companies out there that cater now. So that’s a simple example. The vending machines, that’s another one, low hanging fruit. Why not replace that with some healthier stuff? It’s just so we, we don’t, no one says, wow, I would really love to get some food from the vending machine today. That would be awesome. We get it because we need it, we forgot to bring anything. We go, we bring it because our drawer is empty. We, we no one dreams of vending machine food. So why not have healthy stuff in that vending machine if, if we’re going to have it at all. So yes, there’s some nice, easy things you can start with. I would say the big one is the one you mentioned. Is it a team meeting? Is it something served by the company? Then it will be healthy. Vending machines second. Cafeterias, look, if you’ve got an onsite cafeteria, just be smart. The companies that run these cafeterias, now they get it. They see the value in it. They’ll work with you on this, but you’ve got to come to them and say, we want healthy foods. And we want to limit the options or increase the price because oftentimes the reason people are choosing the junk food isn’t even because they like it more. Although oftentimes that is the case, oftentimes because it’s cheaper, a salad costs, seven bucks and a slice of pizza cost me three. Well, money’s tight. I’m going for the pizza.

Beth

Yeah. Okay. So how does corporate flexibility play in encouraging employee participation in wellness efforts?

Dr. Cooper

This comes back to the trust factor. The, that relationship, the engagement piece, if, if part of our culture of wellness is a culture of trust, a culture of, we want to just help support whatever it is that you’re pursuing in your life to, to move toward that better than yesterday. Then the flexibility with scheduling comes right along with that. And it’s, it’s a tough line to walk along, but when it’s done well, it’s very powerful. Because some folks, they’re in super early and they want to get that run in or walk in over lunchtime and encouraging that makes a difference. Other people, they want to come in a little bit later, cause they’re morning workout people. And so they want to do that. So you get that flexibility. And when we’re looking at wellness is not workout, it’s not food and fitness. I think a lot of people come into wellness thinking it’s all about food and fitness. But when we look at it as life, that changes the perspective. So scheduling, if, if improving life means getting to your kid’s soccer game at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, that’s part of wellness. So I think they all play together in this, this bigger picture when we’re looking at this culture and when we stop looking at wellness as food and fitness, but we look at it as improving our lives.

Beth

Yeah, I can totally see that. So this flexibility could also help with normalizing the use of PTO and vacation days, right?

Dr. Cooper

It could. And in fact, we often encourage organizations that are saying, you know, we don’t have our insurance set up for this year to do a discount off a premium for participation. What else can we do? One of our suggestions is consider extra PTO. So allow them to earn four extra hours off for a, a quarter of participation or, or, you know, eight hours, every six months, something like that. So it not only ties into what you’re saying, but it actually has a potential to add to it. So they have time to invest in these things that matter to them.

Beth

So let’s address the wellness aspects that aren’t centered on physical health. How can an employer encourage better psychological wellbeing, social wellbeing, and financial wellbeing?

Dr. Cooper

Well, one of the things that we utilize with some of our clients is, is this concept of an F5. So F as in Frank 5, and it’s, it’s basically the five major areas of life. And it’s, so it’s faith, family and friends is number two, fuel and fitness is number three, field of play, which is your hobbies and your work, and then finances. And so across those five F’s we’re, we’re looking for, again, we’re, I’m not a believer in this perfect life balance. There are times of your life, like when, when, our kids are all older now, 25, 23 and 21. But there are times of your life when they were five, seven and nine, where it took much more, we were there with like, they’re not even in our house anymore, they’re at college or they’re working, but there was a different time of life when the family piece took a bigger role. I’ve done 11 Ironmans. So the fitness piece, when I was getting ready for those Ironmans and getting ready to go to the world championship in Kona, that fitness took more time. You don’t, we’re not looking for balance. So the F5 is not a checkbox where you go through and you say, is my faith exactly matched up with my family and friends? Does that exactly match up with their finances? That’s not a bad thing, but it’s looking at all five and saying in the midst of this Ironman, am I blowing up my marriage? In the midst of my work efforts, is that affecting my finances? You know, you, you look at it and you say, am I destroying one of these other categories? Because I’m too overly focused in this other area.

Beth

That’s really, really good. And I just wrote all that down. Thank you. Alright. So in the age of the Fitbit and the Apple watch, what role does technology play in complementing corporate wellness efforts?

Dr. Cooper

I love these devices. Like I am a huge fan of them. I am, I use a Garmin for all my triathlon training and I’m plugged into Strava and friends and I will compare notes and they are wonderful. Our daughter just sent me a text the other day about she got into a steps contest with some friends and it was super cool. So they’re, if, if we come back to what we talked about earlier, in terms of the autonomy, am I doing it because this is a tool I’ve chosen to utilize, to enhance my goals, my desired outcome, or am I doing it, because someone’s looking over me as if it’s a, you know, a futuristic movie and someone’s making sure that I did X, Y, Z, right? That’s the key. It keeps coming back to this idea of autonomy. When the program is built to make it meaningful and autonomous, it will be successful. When the program is built to be a top down, this is what you’ve got to do, because these are the gaps that we have identified in your life, regardless of what you think about your life, it’s, it cannot succeed. It doesn’t just fail. It’s impossible to succeed.

Beth

Okay. What are some of the tools that you use in your programs with US Corporate Wellness?

Dr. Cooper

You know, we, we offer the full spectrum. So the things that people have heard about before biometrics, health, risk assessments, portals, incentive, trackers, coaching, group challenges, lunch and learns, the full gamut. And that doesn’t make us any different from anybody else. Where we’re different is we’ve taken those and we’ve said, these are all valuable tools, but we want to start with that individual and the best way to do that, and we don’t do this with all of our clients, but for the ones that come to us and say, what’s the best way to start? We want to start by making the coaching the centerpiece, because we want to create that relationship. We want to create that autonomy. We want to allow each individual to be pursuing something that allows their life to be better. That results in their life being better in their eyes, not necessarily in my eyes or your eyes, but that’s when we get the power. Because if you change any one thing in your life, in the right direction, so let’s just take sleep. For example, let’s say the person is talking to their coach and they say, I’m just not sleeping well. I’ve got a lot of stress going on. Okay. So is that what you’d like to go through? Yeah, that’s what I’d like, so they work through stress. And so the person ends up improving their quality and quantity of sleep by X amount. Guess what happens to their financial decisions? Guess what happens to their food choices? Guess what happens to their percentage of, of days that involves some exercise of some sort? Guess what happens to the relationships with their spouse? You just go down the list. So we didn’t work on relationships with spouse. We didn’t work on finances. We didn’t work on food. We didn’t work on exercise. We didn’t, we worked on sleep and it improved everything else. And that’s the power we think of making coaching that autonomous, personalized relationship oriented, meaningful, accredited coaching, the centerpiece. And then, and by the way, we’re not a coaching company. We’re a wellness company. We just see that as the core piece that has the biggest impact and then impacts everything else going forward. Instead of trying to flip it and saying, well, your finances are a wreck. Your relationships are terrible. Your food is not good. I don’t care. Let’s figure out what you care about. And then once we, once we help you in your journey, your journey, not my version of your journey, your journey to make that better tomorrow. And that improves everything else in your life. And now you tune into it and you go, you know, my marriage is, it’s been a little bit better. I’d like to keep working on that a little bit. Or I found myself exercising a little bit. Coach, could we work through some ways to, so do you see what I’m saying? So it just builds this momentum because momentum is a powerful thing in life. And if we can build on that, it makes all the difference.

Beth

I love that. Well, on your website, you talk about AMP coaching. What exactly is that? Or is that amp?

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Well, it’s both. So when you think about an amplifier, you think about something that makes everything else better. So you, you, the sound comes in an amplifier, puts it out in a much bigger, you know, massive outcome. That’s the idea of AMP coaching. And it stands for accredited, meaningful, and prioritized coaching. Accredited, we’re not talking about nice people on the other end of a phone call in a call center. That’s not coaching that’s, I’m not sure what that is, but, but a lot of companies are doing that and calling it coaching. We want it to be accredited. If you have not been through a program that’s accredited by the NBHWC. That’s not us. That’s the national board for health and wellness coaches. Then you can’t be one of our coaches. So that’s the A. The M is the meaningful piece, because if it’s not meaningful to the individual employee, then it won’t happen. So that’s, the M part is meaningful. And then the P is prioritized instead of saying, yeah, we offer coaching. And that means 2% of our employees utilize it. We want to help the employer. If they want to build a model where coaching is prioritized, where 60, 70, 80, 90% of their employees are connecting with their own coach on a consistent basis. And that consistent basis might be as little as two times a year based on budgets, or it might be four or six times. It doesn’t have to be a lot, that can keep that momentum moving forward in the right direction if we do it well.

Beth

And how does US Corporate Wellness customize their services for the needs of a company?

Dr. Cooper

You know, I’m smiling because I’m thinking it’s essentially the exact same way we do it with the individual employees. We don’t come to them and say, this is program A, this is program B, and this is program C which one would you like? We say, where are we going with this? What have you done in the past? What’s worked? What hasn’t, how would you like to progress over the next year, two years, three years? What would you like to be said about your organization and the culture of wellness by your employees, by your customers five years from now? And so, as I’m thinking about it, it’s, it’s really the same process on a global scale.

Beth

I love how passionate you are about coaching. That’s so obvious, but because of that, you’ve created an Institute dedicated to maximizing coaching skills, the Catalyst Coaching Institute. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Cooper

Yes, and I appreciate you asking about that. We have been training coaches since we started US Corporate Wellness back in 2007. And in 2011, we kept having people come to us saying, well, where can we, where can we get, where can we get trained? And, and how can we work as coaches? And so that’s when we started Catalyst Coaching Institute, it is an NBHWC approved program. And it’s the goal of catalyst is to provide resources for coaches.

Beth

That’s awesome. And you, you guys do so much. I hope that everybody that’s listening will take advantage of all the resources that your companies provide. And for those that are listening, where can they learn more about US Corporate Wellness?

Dr. Cooper

Our website is USCorporateWellness.com. So real easy to remember. The podcast is potentially your best starting point. Cause that gives you access for anyone no matter where they are in the journey, whether they are a coach or they’re just trying to make their lives a little bit better. And again, it’s called The Catalyst Health, Wellness and Performance podcast. And we come out weekly and, some great authors and researchers and athletes and coaches, but it’s all around improving your life and making that better. So that might be a good place to start.

Beth

Awesome. But the interview is not over yet Coop because now it’s time for our lightning round. These are the questions we ask every guest of the podcast. Are you ready?

Dr. Cooper

Let’s do this.

Beth

Alright, topics showdown. In this episode, we discussed health and wellness. In your opinion, which of these descriptions of health would you rather be fit as a fiddle or alive and kicking,

Dr. Cooper

You know, about? I think for me, they’re the same thing. If I’m not fit, I don’t feel alive.

Beth

I like it. What’s the worst job interview question you’ve ever been asked.

Dr. Cooper

I can’t think of one I was asked, but I’ll share a brief story about one that I asked someone else. Our, our daughter got married last December. And when the young man who was dating her, did the traditional let’s sit down with your dad and, and ask for your hand in marriage kind of thing. I asked him a question where I said, okay, so if you’re in my seat and you had an amazing daughter, like this young woman you’ve been dating, and you wanted to know one thing about the guy that was asking for her hand in marriage, what question would you ask? Well, we had some fun with that.

Beth

Oh, I love that. What’s your favorite thing about working in wellness?

Dr. Cooper

Such a blessing to be in a field where every single day you get to see people making positive changes and seeing the results of that. So I think I’d have to say that.

Beth

Yeah, that’s gotta be so gratifying. I can see that too. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Dr. Cooper

I remember a buddy of mine who’s also a triathlete saying when you’re out there on that Ironman course, you know, you’re going to go through tough times. You know, there are going to be struggles. It’s a nine and a half to 11 hour race on a good day. And it’s through all the heat and everything else going on. He said just keep moving forward and keep fueling. And I think that that’s great triathlon advice, but it’s even better life advice.

Beth

That’s awesome. Who or what inspires you?

Dr. Cooper

I would point to our kids again, our kids are 25, 23, 21. We’ve watched them grow up. We’ve watched them go through their different struggles and journeys, and it’s just so cool. They’re so different. It’s amazing that they’re raised by the same parents in the same churches and schools and homes and pets and all this stuff to be so different. But each one of them has just, they’re doing such great things with their lives and they’re having such a powerful impact on the people around them. And it’s just neat to see that as a dad.

Beth

Oh, well, Dr. Cooper, thanks so much for joining me today on this week’s episode of project HR.

Dr. Cooper

I loved it, Beth. Thanks so much for the invite.

Beth

Yes, of course.

Dr. Cooper

Thank you again to Project HR for their willingness to allow us to share this episode with our audience in this format, the Project HR podcast is produced by projections, inc corporate communications company that produces video web and e-learning resources for companies that want to meaningfully connect with their employees. They’ve been helping companies for over four decades and love helping to educate, inform, and build better leaders. You can learn more at projectionsinc.com thank you as always for tuning into one of the top podcasts in health and wellness. Next week’s episode, this, this is a fun one. It features our first throwback episode in over four months. And it’s one you will not want to miss, even if you caught it the first time just as Covid 19 was starting. We had a special interview with Dr. David Katz, a well-respected physician in the area of public health, discussing a little different, and maybe I should say quite a bit different perspective on COVID-19. That episode went on to become easily our most downloaded episode of all time. Now, as we enter the second half of 2020, with some perspective behind us, we thought you just might find it even more interesting to hear now than you did back when it originally aired. We also have some additional resources over at the new YouTube coaching channel, which you can literally find it youtube.com/coachingchannel. Recent features there include a video for coaches on how to price your coaching services, and another about how we can learn from a puppy about coaching. And yes, we did do our best to include a few shots of our nine week old Australian shepherd Sky who just joined our family last week. Now, folks, let’s go get better. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper signing off, make it a great rest of your week. And I’ll speak with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching Podcast.