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| Shoreline Mayor Shari Winstead |
By Shoreline Mayor Shari Winstead
8.22.15
Sometimes it’s really interesting to me how much my “day job” and being on City Council are alike. At my “day job” I am a special project and event manager at a large corporate law firm in Seattle. Basically, I handle large projects that involve communication with employees, and community building employee events for about 500 people.
One of the projects I’ve been managing is the firm’s Wellness Program. We are now in our 4th year of incentivizing employees to submit to a biometric screening (blood test), spend 20-30 minutes answering questions about how they feel, and making them complete “challenges,” taking an action that is good for you - anything from getting a massage to eating breakfast on a regular basis. If you work for any type of organization that pays for employee’s medical insurance, you probably know about wellness program. While I am poking a bit of fun at this program, if you know me it will come as no surprise that I brought the program to the firm. I had participated in a wellness program when I was working for King County, and I loved it. It’s exactly the type of program that I embrace and excel in, because it involves my two favorite things, health and community.
I have to admit that when I wrote a proposal to the firm detailing how a wellness program would be good for our population (99% of whom sit at a desk and 45% of whom bill by the minute), I didn’t really expect it to be taken seriously. However that program resonated with our benefits managers who were seeing the trend of ever increasing health claims and costs. There was a true financial case to be made for a wellness program. Long story short, a wellness program was born, 4 years ago.
I felt honored to be asked to be part of the implementation team, and it was even better to see many people as willing participants, to see folks who started making small changes in their lifestyle, and even better - to see our health premiums increase by single digit - the smallest increase in at least 10 years. Our wellness program was working! Or was it a combination of other environmental factors? - Or even luck?
I know, you are wondering when I’m going to get to the part about my day job being strikingly similar to being a Councilmember. Hang with me, I’m almost there!
Implementation meant first to educate people about what we were doing. We knew it would take a strong and consistent effort and message to get people on board and participating, even though there were only three things to do. We took the time to explain the program, why it was moving forward, and how it would affect people - we even incentivized participation by giving a reduction in the cost of medical premiums for those who completed the three actions. And then we sent postcards, placed posters all over (even the restrooms!), we put articles in the newsletter, sent out targeted e-mails, reminding people of the deadline and encouraging them to participate. I don’t know why, over the last four years, it still surprises me when two weeks before the deadline, 30% of the people wait until they receive the “final email’ that says 9in all upper case letters0 - DEADLINE ON 8/31 TO SAVE MONEY ON HEALTH INSURANCE! my phone rings off the hook and my in-box overflows with e-mails from people asking: “What wellness program? We have a wellness program?” “When is the deadline? What do I need to do?” It’s pretty frustrating, of course, since so much time has gone in to the communication program, but I consider it an opportunity to practice patience and kindness.
So last week I was talking with a colleague at the firm, explaining about the situation at work, how we had done so much to inform people, when I realized I was also, ironically enough, explaining the Council’s recent rezone action and the public’s reaction. After literally 4 years of council discussions (all done in public and recorded), public meetings, small committee meetings, meetings where a staff member would walk the area with interested citizens, articles in Currents and a postcard to the area surrounding the rezone area that said CHANGE IS COMING!, and large boards actually on the corridor with the information. And still, there are people who insist we did not do enough public outreach, people who claim they never knew about the process. It’s hard to understand when you know you have done so much - because it was critically important to the Council that people were informed. We practically begged for people to be engaged in the process. Just like the Wellness Program.
I don’t know if the phenomena of “skimming”, rather than comprehensively reading is because of technology, or because everyone is so busy, overloaded, over scheduled or just always going too fast. My conclusion is that it’s worth it to slow down and pay a little more attention to the things we think we don’t have time for - like mail from the City. Maybe read the entire Currents instead of just the front and back cover, or actually read what the postcard says instead of tossing it in the recycle with a mere glance. If you go too fast, you’ll miss the important stuff. I write these words not just to encourage others, but as a reminder to myself. I have learned so much by being the one writing the communication plan and hoping that people read what we spend so much time trying to get perfect. I have learned that taking the extra few seconds to make the right decision on immediately deleting or recycling is a worthy way to spend my time. Because I truly do want to be informed - don’t we all?
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