Seeking to promote good health among fellow employees, staff members at Imperial Bag and Paper Company LLC held a contest that would reward those employees who managed to lose the most weight over six weeks from May until early July.
“The staff held a weigh-in every Friday,” said Diana DeJesus, an executive assistant, who had brought the idea over from another company where she had previously worked.
Two awards were given to those people who had the greatest percentage of weight loss over the six weeks. Humbert (last name withheld) won first place, losing 22.8 pounds or about 13.4 percent weight loss. Millie lost 15.4 pounds, or 13.2 percent.
But in some ways, all of the employees were winners since the accumulated loss of weight among the 26 employees that participated was 227 pounds.
“I remember how successful it was in my old place.” – Diana DeJesus
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She said the idea came to her when she kept overhearing people talking about losing weight.
“I thought this would be a way for them to do that,” she said. “I kept overhearing women in the lunch room talking about it and so I thought this was a good idea.”
So popular was the event that the company will likely do it again – perhaps making it a quarterly contest that will keep people healthy and energized.
Bob Moore, the president of the company, encouraged the effort because he said he liked promoting good health, DeJesus said.
While the men and women involved in the contest were enthusiastic, some were shy about revealing their weight to the other employees.
“They didn’t want to get weighed in front of everybody, so we weighed them separately,” she said.
The weekly weigh-in took place in the weight room each Friday, but nobody was forced to keep to that schedule. If someone missed the last weigh-in, their last weight was used for the contest results. A person who knew he or she would be out on Friday was allowed to weigh-in on Thursday instead.
Contestants kicked in a $20 entry fee, which made up the total prize money. All of it went to the winners. The first place winner received 75 percent on the money collected, and second place received the rest.
Tallies were kept using an Excel grid. Each week, each person’s progress was sent to them.
DeJesus said people used a variety of strategies to lose weight. Some used the weight room the company had. Some of the women held a ladies’ night, where they commiserated while they worked up a sweat. Many of the men spent time at the work place on their off time, working off the pounds with the weights, many of them joking with each other in friendly competition, offering to buy donuts for their opponents.
“It was a lot of fun,” DeJesus said. “The whole atmosphere was great, and most people were eating healthy.”
People reduced the size of their clothing and seemed to feel better about themselves. Each individual had his own accomplishments, and made his own level of progress. But overall, the group averaged 10 lost pounds per person. The employees, she said, are planning to do it again after Labor Day.