 We are excited to bring back our Friday forums. There was a little disruption over the past few years that made life a little bit difficult for many of us, all of us. And now here we are. So we are super excited for what the conversation we're going to have for the next hour. I'm going to do just a quick tell you who's at the table, and then I'm going to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves. But before we do that, the purpose of the conversation today is to talk about health and health care and wellness and how it affects your bottom line in business. We hear often from our members that the cost of health care is debilitating to business. And we also know that we need our employees to be healthy and well in order to come to work and do good work for us as employers. And so what does that really look like and how do we make that work? And so we've got some health care professionals on the panel that are going to talk about health and health care from their perspective. We've got some organizations, employers from the area that are going to talk about the wellness programs that they implemented and how it has benefited their organizations. And then we also have a wellness professional that's going to talk about what those wellness programs could look like. So with that, right here next to me, we have Nikki Miller, who is the director at Kohler Water Spa. Yay! Right next to her, we've got Kristin Stearns, who is the CEO of Lakeshore Community Health Care. Next to Kristin is Dr. Rai, president and CEO of Prevea Health. And then we've got Brenda Blazier, RN and BSN Occupational Health Nurse with Milivore Sigma. And next to her is Samantha Frederick, HR Business Partner Manager, Georgia Pacific of Sheboygan. So with that, I'm going to pass the mic. Do you guys want to rock, paper, scissors to see who goes first? Nikki goes first. Oh, Nikki goes first. I like it. I like it. So this is a very long court, so you do have to get very close. All right, thank you for having me. Such an honor to be here. As Deidre said, I'm the director of the Kohler Water Spas. So I oversee our two spa facilities in Wisconsin, one being in Green Bay, associated with Lodge Kohler. We have our headquarters in Kohler, which is associated with the American Club. And then we have two day spas in Chicago. And we also have a offsite facility in St. Andrews, Scotland. I've been with the company for 25 years. I am a licensed therapist as well, or massage aesthetics. So I've spent most of my life in the beginning providing services for our community and our guests. And today, focusing on new development, new product development, we work very closely with the plumbing side of Kohler to develop new experiences through health through water, fixtures, bathing experiences, all kinds of different projects. So I'm excited to be here today just to give an insight on our product, what we produce for people is providing massages and facials and mayonnaise and patties for people. So they're exhausted. They're tired. If I look at our associates, we have about over 500 just in spas right now. They're physically exhausted. But I think they've endured a new exhaustion of mental exhaustion just from the energy that they're consuming from their guests. And so we'll talk more later about what's the best wellness program for those that are absorbing that kind of physicality from their patients, I guess. Thank you. Well, good afternoon, everybody. As Cedars said, I'm Kristen Stearns, I'm the CEO of Lakeshore Community Health Care. For those of you that don't know who we are, we're a non-profit organization located here in Schwagen where a man of Schwagen now have a site in West Bend. We are what's considered a federally qualified community health center, which is just a lot of jumbled words for that we're here as a safety net provider really to provide access to here to the community. So those that are under and uninsured folks with really high deductible insurances, but their income falls again, added below 200% of the federal poverty level. We're a space that can give them services at a discounted rate. We provide primary medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, chiropractic and substance use services at most of our sites and we do do school-based services also dental and mental health. And what I would say is I think a lot of people through the pandemic, and I'm sure Dr. Rai will concur, really waited to get their healthcare needs met. And so what we're seeing is sicker individuals with more chronic diseases throughout our community. And then to go with what you say, that secondary trauma that our employees are getting from them, trying to really help individuals manage our care is really a struggle right now. I'm not sure Dr. Rai if you're gonna talk a little bit about how it also engages a little bit more violence in our workplaces than ever before. I'll let you maybe talk a little bit more about that, so. Thank you, and yeah, I think we could probably between all of us talk for hours on that. What we love, my name is Dr. Rachelle Gry and I'm the president and CEO of Prevail. I am trained in both internal medicine and pediatrics, but began my career up in Green Bay, mainly seeing the sickest of the sick. So all of those that are inside the hospital and inside the intensive care unit is where my majority of my practice was. Now I still practice medicine, being one of the only practicing CEOs in the Midwest, but most of my practice is now operation-based, but still seeing pretty sick patients. Have a lot of passions around wellness, you know, depending on how you look at it. Are you looking at it from a CEO perspective? So we can talk about that. From a physician perspective or a science perspective, there are a lot of different ways where you can take your questions and comments. But most importantly, I look at it today from a patient perspective. A lot of you may have tuned in to a Zoom or two that I had to be part of during COVID or might have watched a television station that might have had me on every so often. Nothing like not having to get up at four o'clock in the morning now, I like that. But what you may not know, unless you didn't see the TV special on that, is I'm approaching the one year anniversary of 71 minutes. That's my cardio pulmonary bypass time. That's how long they had to stop my heart for to cut my chest open and repair it. And then during the preoperative process, found out I was an uncontrolled diabetic for the medical staff in the room. I had to move over to the A1C of 10.8, which meant I was a very sweet man. And so I can talk about it from a patient perspective. You talk about everything that I got ignored. Well, I worked a little abnormally hard during COVID and ignored everything else and literally almost lost my life because of it. So it can give you a lot of different perspectives and hopefully we'll take the conversation in a few different directions today. Thank you for having me. I'm Brenda Blazer. I'm a BSN registered nurse. I am the Occupational Health Nurse at Middleport Sigma. My history, what's funny is my former boss is sitting over there when I tried to do underwriting at Acuity. I actually was technical support, went to Acuity, did that and then tried to underwriting. It wasn't for me. So I became a nurse later in life. I graduated at 50 and started out at St. Nick's in Labor and Delivery. Was recruited by my preceptor to Prevea and I worked as a triage nurse for family practice and internal medicine. I left for a little bit just to get my bachelor's degree and worked for Aurora for six months and then was recruited over to Middleport Sigma. My job kind of entails a little bit of everything. I do work comp. I do just seeing people for bumps, bruises or anything personal or work related. I organize flu and flu clinics and blood drives and biometrics and I really try to help guide people in health and introduce them to our Health and Wellness program which is health advocates and also just guide them to, I send a lot of people to Prevea just because I know that there's doctors taking people, I think my biggest challenge is like 20-year-olds who come on and they don't have a PCP. They use urgent care as a primary care provider. So trying to get them into those positions and so my former boss, I keep in very close contact with Christian Eichberg and thank you for being our COVID test provider all this time during COVID as well and we partnered with Prevea for that as well. So looking forward to a better year COVID getting less and less and looking forward just to help my employees to get healthier and to continue on and make that a priority in their life. Thank you, I'm Samantha Friendly and I'm the HR business partner, manager at Georgia Pacific here in Sheboygan and I have spent my career in HR and in manufacturing so a really nice spot for me. I've been there for a total of nine weeks so I'm gonna do my best. But I also really wanna say and I really appreciate what Dr. Rice said because I really take the philosophy and the mindset of in HR we're not just instituting policies and procedures and all these things that people have to align to. I also write bills for myself. I receive them as myself for myself if you will because I'm also an employee and so I think it's really important to sit on both sides of the table, listen to work force and make improvements accordingly. So happy to be here, thank you. All right, thank you. Thank you everyone for the introductions and I think this would be a great place for us to really start with our organizations and when we talk about workforce development, clearly we don't have enough human bodies in Sheboygan County, well in lots of places but most importantly in Sheboygan County because that's where we focus our efforts and so the folks that we do have here, we need to keep them healthy, we need them to come to work every day and we need them to be as productive as possible. So maybe with our folks from Georgia Pacific and Millipore Sigma you can talk about some of the trends you're seeing with staff, with illness, with injuries, et cetera and kind of how that affects how successful or unsuccessful business can be. So, all right, so being part of safety that's a big thing for us and it's a big push this year for Millipore Sigma. We had 24 OSHA recordables last year and we're trying to get on top of that this year. One of the things that I did ask about from the health advocate portion of that, what the benefits were for people to focus on health and safety and they said that having healthy employees save this company money in a lot of different ways there's an absence perspective if people are in better health you have more productive employees on the floor more often and from medical claims perspective it costs the company less to engage employees of the ability to course correct their potential problems that they may have and get that under control than it is to actually treat a lot of disease. So if you can get people engaged we offer a program with health advocate that we will pay every employee for certain things that they do they'll pay them $200 to have their yearly physical and that doesn't mean that they paid for the physical but we have really, really good insurance so it's 20 bucks for them to go get their physical and they pay them $200 to have that done. If they get their flu shot they get $100 for that. They can engage in other things on health advocate site they can engage in webinars they can engage in challenges they can do all of that they'll equal up to $500 and they pay that out quarterly. So right now we have about 59% of our employees engaged in that program they can hook up their eye watches they can hook up garments they can hook up whatever they can track their steps they get money for that. So that program has been really good and very attainable for all of our employees to participate in and every year we just look for opportunities to help and we keep adding things to those programs all of the time and also with insurance we offer up to $150 reimbursement if you sign up for a weight loss program if you sign up for a gym they'll give you $150 back. So we really try to give a lot of incentives to stay healthy and that will put our bottom line with people on the floor more healthy working and not so much out being ill or not so much out being hurt on the job like physically, especially if they keep their bodies in good shape. Thank you, I appreciate it, we appreciate it. You're different though. We take a very similar approach I would change it a little for us in that and I would say we take less out of the paycheck instead of like giving back we incentivize and we say hey if you and your spouse you know we'll do a wellness exam you learn your baseline and then you build from there with a lot of our programs you know your cost is in as high as someone else who doesn't go that route if you will and so our employees like to have less come out of their paycheck if you will but we also like to receive incentives of course so that's great and I can appreciate what the teacher was asking because I think for us we take the approach of wanting our employee to be healthy inside of work and outside of work and so we do a lot of different fun challenges you mentioned like walking programs that's something we do there's a really neat stat out there for Georgia Pacific and I think the starting point is our corporate location which is in Atlanta but they did a walking challenge and the employees that participated walked billions of miles in the years time and that equated to 26 times to the moon and back and so it's just kind of a fun, fun stat making it challenging to folks and saying okay now next year we want to maybe we want to walk to all of the planets and back 26 times and just really having something fun thinking about it not all the terms, not every employee understands all of the benefits available to them quite often they find themselves in a spot where they actually they need it but didn't know they needed it and then all of a sudden they're learning about our array of benefits and we do a ton of programs ton of incentives, you name it as far as safety and health in the workplace we have like a Brenda on site happens to be with Bell and Health and our rep works between Green Bay and Sheboygan location but she comes on site twice a month and what we really appreciate and what she really gives the employees is she follows up and she's ridiculous about that and she doesn't let the employee get away with maybe not following their steps and their care plan and their quick care practice because we care about our employees enough to make them whole and come back to them and hold them accountable in the right way and so we just have a really nice program consistent and what we find is that in place that came when is she coming back again and so they start looking forward to the benefit and the tools available to them and so we really appreciate that as well so when the employee first making resources available and then educating them on those resources when they realize they need them or they just want to ask a question or they just don't understand it where they're rude, they're resource and maybe they'll find out in the future they want to know more, they want to learn more they want to, or they have a need or something happens with their spouse you name it or a child so we're there, make that employee whole and be their resource, thank you. Thank you so much and Dr. Rye I'll pass this over to you in a moment but maybe you can share, you know especially from the medical doctor perspective kind of the trends you're seeing and you guys partner, you guys being Prevea partner with many employers throughout the state of Wisconsin and so maybe you can speak to some of the experiences with that and some trends that you guys are seeing in ways that you are looking to counteract some of the negativity or the negative effect. Sure, you know it's important to recognize also I'm an employer, I have 2,400 employees so we're not immune from our own health issues you know I think we talked a lot COVID about follow the science, right that's a common mantra I probably said I was blue in the face so if you actually follow the science on wellness which is a $50 billion industry right now in the United States, last quote I saw in an article that's companies spending $50 billion on wellness programs and are we actually seeing the reward of that so there was a randomized control trial so those of you know statistics or science would understand that that's one of the best powerful studies we could do you take a large group of people and you randomize them and they did this in 2019 they didn't really pay attention to the article because something else came up and they took thousands of employees of a university and you got wellness programs and you didn't and actually it was a really good wellness program you name it, HRA, exercise programming all the stuff that we sell to be honest with you in healthcare and you know what they found? None of it actually works when it comes to one specific bottom line issue that every employer is always focusing on which is the cost of what they're spending in healthcare so it's not to say that wellness programs don't work so I think it's important when you go into launching a wellness program is why are you doing it? Is it around employee engagement? Idria pointed out that you know we're in a labor war right now so is it around offering a program that engages your employees and makes them want to say is it a benefit to them but is it actually gonna lower your healthcare costs? Actually only one thing in the articles which have actually proven to lower their healthcare costs does anybody know what that is? I want one guess, Josh, not a lot of you work on. The employees themselves, the want to do it, the employees themselves? The only single activity that's been shown to lower healthcare costs is a primary care visit once a year. Believe it or not, so I mentioned my little issue So as a really well-trained internist, I kind of figured I'd know when something was wrong with my body, so I might skip the visit or two or ten. Ten years without a visit. But in that time period, I participated in almost every wellness activity that Pervet had. I raced in two centuries, if you know what that is. It's a bike race where you race 100 miles. One actually met for a century years down here in Shibuya. I am one of the OGs of Peloton, and I actually was one of the original owners that have gone into the studio. I remember them celebrating my 100th ride and all of those. I did all of that during this time period, but I never went to the doctor. And what did we find out from skipping ten visits? Uncontrolled diabetic that needs to have his chest split open. And think about how much that cost per day. I know I had to write a dang check. So think about the wellness activities that we're all talking about here, and you have to go into them and ask the why behind it. So from a physician's perspective and a healthcare perspective, we want to follow the science. There's really strong science around engagement of your employees and wellness activities. So make sure that you have programming that's engaging them and that they want, not that you think they need. And then more importantly, if you're trying to lower your costs, you are likely not going to make anybody significantly healthier when it comes to their overall spend. With that programming, you're going to need to find the activity that does. So all three of us actually mentioned that we have incentives in place, whether it's a cash incentive or a lowering of your health premium like Epravea, if you have that visit. And that will actually lower your cost. But more importantly, you have to look as an employer, where are you spending your money? Is it on meds? Is it on specialty meds that could be reduced? Is it on catastrophic care? What could be prevented? Are you actually getting care from a site of service at the right rate? Are you getting an MRI that's based inside a hospital where you're likely going to pay 10 fold because the hospital actually has to stay open 24 hours a day? Or are you having an outpatient setting with MRIs anywhere from $500 to $900? So when you're actually talking about cost reduction, it's not always about making your employees healthier. You only have a certain amount of control over that. You have full amount of control over where you spend money. And the small amount of control you have, follow the science and make sure they're engaging. But don't forget that the wellness activities actually are engagement activities. There are ways to engage your employees and retain your employees. So I'm not saying, you know, we follow the science everywhere and as a very large employer, we actually have pretty nice wellness benefits. But I don't look at them as a way of saying I'm going to spend less on health care. I look at them as a happier workforce, a more engaged workforce. And why would they want to leave if they have benefits like that? So at Prevea, you get the Peloton app. I don't know why all of a sudden we can't have a spokesperson for that. You get the app for free if you use it. We pay for that because we're spread across the states. You can imagine trying to pick a gym and you're going to make somebody unhappy and somebody happy with that. So we don't really have a gym benefit. We have a wellness benefit that includes that amongst other things. But you pay a lot less for your health insurance at Prevea. You do one thing a year. Go to your doctor. Which I am now incented to do. Way too much. Way too many minutes for the rest of my life. And I will live with the scars for the rest of my life as well. Yeah, real quick. Under randomized testing, did that include mental wellness? So the randomized control trial was really focused on wellness programs. They did have, and I can actually, it's a 2019 trial done at the University of Illinois, Urbana. So you can Google the original article which is in the Wall Street Journal under wellness programs. But the actual scientific article comes out. You can find it on PubMed out of the University of Illinois. It's a publicly available article. They had a psychological component to their wellness programming. But I wouldn't say it was a mental health program as you would traditionally look at it. And as my colleague and Nikki pointed out, when it comes to the programming that we need, as healthcare providers or three hundred healthcare providers would point out, that the mental health component in the post-COVID world, even in the pre-COVID world, is definitely outstripped ours of the need to provide it. That's how big of a need it is right now. We'll put the answers you've got. Thank you, Christian. Go for it. I wasn't going to prompt you a question, but if you've got something you'd like to share, go for it. I was just going to actually pass it over to you, Kristen, and you support a lot of folks throughout our area as well. And so maybe you can share really some of the trends. And, you know, when we think about, you know, you guys see a lot of folks, but maybe what are some ways that our employers, because really this is, you know, about how do we get our employers the benefit of making sure, or ensuring that their workforce is healthy and active in the wellness and healthcare game. But what are you seeing? What would you like to see employers doing differently? And what do you think can really save the money in the end if they did? Obviously, Dr. Rice shared, just go to the doctor. And I will just put this plug in as a wife. I go to the doctor every year. My husband, probably 10 years, if he didn't go to the doctor. Thankfully, nothing was wrong. But I don't know if it's a man versus woman thing or not, but I feel like women are maybe more inclined to go. In the midway. Oh my goodness. So thank you, teacher. I think, I mean, I agree with Dr. Rice and not even knowing that study, though I probably should. I feel terrified in that. Clearly, I was too busy trying to deal with COVID. I don't know. But again, it is, and what we've seen is those like a primary care visit overall are costing you money in the end, right? Because more and more people, we're seeing sicker and sicker people with multiple chronic diseases now that before COVID, and I'm going to put COVID as a piece of this, right? All of us were told not to go to the doctor, because we were trying to take care of really sick individuals that needed all of our expertise and our employees. And so we asked you to please not come in and to put off things. And it's created a crisis at this point of where we're at as a country around our overall health, including our mental health for sure. I think the biggest thing, my thing, my take, one take away is if you overall is, we see a lot of individuals who are employed. It's a misnomer that we are somehow a free clinic where everybody we see does not have a job. But we see a lot of your employees, you all don't understand what their potential federal poverty level is. And what we really want to say is we need to eliminate that barrier to access to care, whether that's dental health. And so we pull our, I always say we somehow pull our teeth out of our overall health and we pull our brain out of our overall health and we just look at everything else. But all of that plays a role in the productivity of your employees. I am telling you, a toothache is the most painful thing in the world and will make an employee the least productive. They can't think, they can't function. It is detrimental to their overall health. I often will get phone calls from, and especially small business owners and nonprofit leaders. I've been employed with an abscess tooth and think about where your mouth is and where your brain and your heart is. That infection can create so much more damage. And so again, we just need to be proactive in engaging with our employees, understanding their needs as a family, as individuals, and getting them to the right space in place for care. So if they're at a below 200% of the federal poverty level and they have high deductible insurance plans, like we have. I mean, you know, there's no... I'm super jealous. I might come go work for you all. Because when we do incentive programs, again, small businesses and nonprofits, and I know there's a lot of you in this room, we don't have that luxury to do all of those cool engagement things like you all do. I mean, we try to give discounts where we can. We have discounts for gyms and things like that. But, you know, when we're really looking at somebody to get them that access, we can still give discounted care. Being on an insurance plane doesn't... does not dissuade that eligibility. And so patient walking in our doors say that they're at 150% of the federal poverty level, which I can't get off my head. So 200% of the federal poverty level right now is about $25,000 for an individual, just so we're clear on that, right? Family of four, we're talking about $50,000. The median income here in Chavoy County is about $50,000. So it just, you know, we need to think about that. But if we can get people access to that care and we can give them a discount, so they're only paying off of that cold pay, $45 to us, we can get them healthy. And that is super important. And I think, again, primary care visits are the start of that. Encouraging talking to your employees about, you know, colon screenings, breast cancer screenings. I know these are things people don't want to talk about, but that's what saves lives. That preventative, regular screening care. On the mental health side, listen, it is a struggle. The struggle is real. We don't have enough therapists. You don't have enough therapists. I think we all probably have six to months to a year, wait in most cases in this community. The struggle is real. It is. And we know it. And we're trying. Just so you know, we know we're trying. But there are not enough graduates graduating programs to provide therapy. And so we're in a new phase. When I graduated as a therapist, nobody wanted me. They were too many. So I decided not to keep my degree and go on. And now I've, you know, you know, so again, these, this absent flows. And so know that things like apps like the coal map, things like that are great add-ons or opportunities for your employees. Talking about creating psychological safety in the workplace. How do we raise conflict and deal with it? Because again, where do things get stressful when we can't communicate with each other? And I think about where in the therapeutic world we can help. It's giving that face to our employees, talking about an understanding area, areas and identifying areas of need with our employees. So things, other options. QPR, question, first grade respond. Julie's here today. Mental health America will come on and do that for you. Mental health first aid. An opportunity for some of your employees to get these, you know, to be peer support within your organization. Our ways to help reduce some of that stuff. So, all right. I talked too much. Sorry. All right. So we've talked quite a bit about some mental health stuff. And so I'm going to pass this to Nikki, where she can share with us maybe some ways you can engage your employees or your employees can engage in spaces that might help alleviate some of that mental health concern. Thank you. So, so many great topics down the line. I'm like, I wish I had a note paper to keep notes on everything I wanted to say because I talked too much too. So, anyways, I think, you know, to kind of back up, and I'm going to reference you as I remember, the wellness industry as it stands today globally. So not domestically, but globally is a $3 trillion industry that they're seeing is even exceeding manufacturing or any other industry globally. So just think about that. Like, and it's not going to stop there. They're projecting right now in the next year it's going to hit $5 trillion globally. So we partner with a global wellness organization. And so it gives us a, you know, a bigger picture of what's really going on in the world. You know, we know that mental health and suicide is up 300%. That 300% was something I learned two years ago. It's probably doubled today, right? Not my area of expertise, but I know it exists. Everybody in this room has someone that they know whether it's in their workplace, whether it's personally, professionally, that is struggling with some sort of burnout, depression, struggling with belonging, fitting in with community, whatever that might be. In the top 12 global trends of globally, one of the top 12 trends is the struggle of loneliness. As a society, people are, I'll say, fading or dealing with loneliness. And so to Dr. Rice Point, we have a program through, a wellness program through Purbea. It's great. You have an app. You're told what to do. You can click on the links. But we can't control who's doing that. And at what capacity are they doing that? And yes, the tools are available, but what are they actually, how are they actually engaging in some of these tools? Are they just checking the box? Or are they really truly using the tools to their benefits? So some of the things that we do, and this might help your organization as well, and I would challenge all of you as well. We know the tricks. We know people put their watches on their feet and walk around and get extra steps, right? They're going to work the system to get and save a dollar. But we create work groups. So we will actually, within our organization, we will grab associates that are interested, and we start to create little communities. We create groups or communities because there's that sense of belonging, and it encourages each other. It engages each other to go around the block and do a walk. Our break room, we've removed, we've removed all the vending machines, all the food, and we are now providing baked, I know people love chips, right? But they're baked chips or they're granola bars. We've got purified waters. We have apps on the TV screens that are playing these meditational kind of experiences. So while they're sitting there, it's going on in the background. And even though your brain isn't, you might not think you're paying attention to it, but it is playing, and your brain is catching some of those messages. Every Monday, we have morning meditation. And guess what? You don't have a choice. You're going to participate. And we have people that come in and they teach you how to breathe. 80% of the population doesn't know how to breathe today. Breathing is part of what oxygenates our entire body. And to Dr. Rice's point, follow the science, right? We know what oxygen does to the body. So they don't even know they're taking care of themselves. And they can't figure out when they leave to go out to take care of, you know, six guests, how they feel better. Wednesdays is Wellness Wednesdays. We provide free yoga class for all the associates to come up and participate in yoga. For six months, guess how many people showed up? Zero. Zero. I sat in the room by myself. We had the best professionals of yoga instructors. We started to take it as a group. Hey, started a chat. Hey, we're going to yoga on Wednesday morning at seven. Are you guys all coming? By that next week, we had 15 people participating, right? So how are you leading your team? What are you doing to engage and to bring your team with you? They don't have the self-motivation right now because they're burnt out to self-motivate themselves. They need someone to help in them and hold them accountable. And an app is really difficult to respond to. So when you're in front of them and you're saying, we're going this and they start to see that there's this movement and you're creating a culture and your business, all of a sudden people start to journal and they start to talk and they start to share and they start to eat healthier and they start, hey, we have a break together at two. You want to go take a quick walk around the block. They start to become part of their self-wellness. I'm probably asked 10 times a day, can you create a home care self-wellness? How do I go home and take care of myself? How do I, you know, how do I do better at home? And people are longing for this information and it's simple. And I think, you know, there's a balance between Eastern and Western medicine, right? Like you have to have both because there's a science behind things, but then there's the feeling part of things where it's just educating and giving people the tools and the opportunity to, one, learn about it. It's a lot of its education. But how are we as leaders and leaders of our organization leading our teams and leading by example, right? Like you didn't go to the doctor for 10 years, but you're educating your people to come see them, right? So leading by example, our staff right now, to your point, are probably the least healthiest people in the industry and all they do all day long is care for others. That's not okay, right? So we have to also lead by example and give them permission and help them understand what they can do to take better care of themselves. We do have internal programs where every associate gets four free services a year. Last year I looked at the numbers, 25% of our staff used them. When they're done, they're gone. They're getting free massages, free. They don't have to pay a single penny to them. They don't use them. Do you need protocol? They don't need them. I mean, who does that, right? And so these things are available to them and they don't do them. They're tired, they're exhausted, they're burnt out. They don't even have energy to stay and enjoy themselves. And there's another big part of it which I could talk for hours for. And as humans, we have a heavy load of guilt. We feel guilty to stay and take care of ourselves. We feel guilty to make our employees and our partners and our colleagues work on us after work. We came in and did services for your whole team and we had her nurses crying the moment we touched them. Some of them we were touching with little Theragon machines and the moment that someone touched them they had tears in their eyes. They would never have gone and done that for themselves, right? We gave them little essential oils, something so simple and they were like in tears, right? We just have to think outside the box of what are the little things and sometimes it's just someone thought about me, right? And that to your point where the engagement where our goal is, they don't want to leave us. It's not because we saved you $100 because you joined the 10 step challenge. Actually, no one's allowed to join the 10 step challenge by themselves. We always have, we call it wellness warrior groups where we have people in groups and then we make it fun and have internal incentives but it costs us nearly nothing, right? Figuring out those things. So, thank you. Well, I think I speak for most people in this audience when I say I would strongly encourage Kohler to donate the 75% of services that are not being used on an annual basis and we can kind of do a thing at the chamber if you'd like, we'd be happy to support that. We'll partner and we'll just start doling them out, right? Okay. I know we're getting short on time. I would like to pass it over to Dr. Rye again and we, you know, we talk with a lot of small businesses. We represent probably close to 97% of our chamber businesses are small businesses and in many cases they say, how can I afford to help my people stay healthy? So maybe you could talk about some ways that you're aware that might help them. You know, I think probably the biggest thing that I did wrong I think I always learned from my mistakes is, you know, as a physician and in the healthcare industry you get a little egocentric. In other words, you know the answer, right? Like I know what I'm going to be sick and how stupid was I? So I think stepping out of your own box and thinking you know what your employees want rather than asking them what they want I think was the single biggest difference that I made. When I looked at lack of engagement in certain areas it's because we weren't really talking to people and understanding where their needs are. Maybe it's not mental health. Maybe it is, you know, just the ability to socialize. You know wellness doesn't have to be expensive. Granted, we just use numbers like billions and trillions of dollars but the actual performing of taking care of oneself and the needs for that don't have to be expensive and it doesn't matter how small or big you are there's opportunities to engage your employees. So maybe they do want to do group activities. I mean not just to get better but just to be with some other people. So maybe it's partnering with the chamber and doing a wellness activity in their, you know, beautiful new conference room. How's that for a look? I mean I've been practicing my yoga for a while. Yeah, you don't want me doing that, trust me. I need to. But, you know, I think I get asked a lot from smaller employers how can I do something? Our healthcare is so expensive. And what I'm really trying to do today is make sure you're drawing that difference between what you're spending on healthcare. That is a whole other conversation that we can spend hours on. Versus what are you doing to take care of your employees and that's the wellness conversation. Where CEOs fail is when they are looking at this hand and talking about the wellness conversation and then their CFO is that other angel on their shoulder going, so what's the ROI? Smack that angel or that devil off that shoulder. Don't go smacking your CFO. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that. Mine will punch me. Josh knows she will punch me. But she did ask me with ROI. I went, Lori, it's not about the spend. If I were to tie our wellness investments to my healthcare spend, I would call myself a failure right now because our healthcare spend this year is $3.2 million over budget because of 22 catastrophic cases. And that wellness program would have done nothing to affect those 22 cases. You know what would have affected those 22 cases? Let's go out to the doctor. I'm good at this now. I like this. So I think it's really important that we start to draw some of those divisions because every one of you works for a company or you're an independent business and you're thinking about how to afford tomorrow, right? But if you start tying your wellness programs into your ability to afford tomorrow you will fail your employees. Wellness is about engagement and retainment in the improvement of the people that you love because I love all 2,400 of our employees and that's the way I look at it. The health insurance, that's a whole other conversation that we need to have, like deeper dives, excited service transformation. Why are you getting an MRI here versus not here? Why are we spending X amount at a coronary center that care could have provided locally? Like why does care, when you look at your expense sheet, go look at to see how much leave should go in county and guarantee you almost 50% of what left should go in county could have stayed here. If you had your plan designed better and you would have saved millions it would totally distract you from the wellness conversation we're trying to have. So I think it's really important to start dividing that out. The trillion dollars, the billion dollar industry on wellness is not about reducing your health care spending. The minute you try to make it that you won't spend the money you need to and more importantly you won't spend the time where you need to. I was just thinking of a practical thing that you can do and I have the advantage that I've worked in both health care systems and I stayed close to everybody in the health care system but if you have an occupational health nurse at your company or if you have an HR person I'd highly encourage you to reach out to the manager of the clinics in your area and find out so that the people can go visit a doctor who's taking new patients. Do they have new doctors? There's a lot of turnover a lot in this area. Find out who's here now. Find out who is taking new patients and so when people come to you you can give them a name because there's nothing worse than handing out go on this little website check out see who's in your network and try to pick a name just out of random. If you can get some insight on them if you can see that they maybe are really good in a certain area I have the advantage that I know the doctors that I've worked for those doctors and I know who's great and who would really match with somebody but that's what I keep trying to push is sign up, get a doctor see somebody every year and then that way it's just a more personal way to be able to give a name instead of go to this list on the website. For our larger employers a lot of them pay us a very small fee to hire an in-house care navigator. We're complicated. We're confusing. We suck as an industry when it comes to navigating us. It's really difficult. You think about my healthcare journey I should probably know who to call when to call and have it done and I even ran into stumbling blocks and frustrations and had to call in many a favor. So care navigation is looking to get that cost reduction and not that wellness arm but one of the biggest investments you can make in cost reduction is having somebody help your people navigate care from finding a PCP to my knee hurts, where can I get therapy before I go off and get an MRI that I don't need to I found a lump it's Saturday morning, what do I do? You know what's the easy button because I'm scared it's really important to think about where you put your investments in it's more than cost savings once again it's around that engagement and taking care of people you love who obviously help you make your living if you're running a business and it's your people. Thank you and I'm going to bring this back to Samantha for a moment before we finish up and if there's questions then we'll think about those and we'll get to those in a moment but from an HR perspective you know when people call in you know how many people you need to hire you know what your turnover looks like so maybe tell us if you could pick the top three things that an employer can do to you know attract, retain and keep their folks healthy, what would that look like what advice would you give? That's a really great question and I think a lot of us if we had the magic answer we'd be fully staffed and you know we have zero turnover but that's not to say that we don't have a lot of wins and a lot of successes and so it's a really good question I'm always going to say you gotta listen to your the workforce, you gotta listen to the people and I really truly believe I'm not just on one side of the table I'm on both so you know what we're hearing what we're listening to is things are very confusing you know at GP we do a really good job we literally have one number you can call and you will get an answer to all the complexities and benefits and wellness and all the terms you never knew you needed to know you know we try to simplify and break it down and so I'll say that right let's see three things to your question it's a great question listening of course providing those resources and then following up I think that's really important so someone will come to me with a need and I listened I got a solution but I absolutely followed up and if I didn't have a solution I go right back and say I'm still working on it and remind me we're talking about this this and this correct because what I also find out is then that's compounded to more concerns they didn't realize until after they left and they thought about it more and so it's really full circle okay I know we are at time but are there any questions from you guys that haven't been answered yet well the good news is you guys must have told them everything they need to going once going twice okay so I just want to say thank you to all of our speakers today for the conversation you know again especially from the Chambers perspective we represent about 730 members or businesses if you will that represent 50,000 or so employees throughout Sheboygan County and beyond and we hear the same things over and over we can't find enough folks we can't retain our folks and of course now with the healthcare crisis and you know COVID and all these weird things that have happened in the past few years it's how do we keep our people happy healthy and productive and so having these conversations is truly beneficial to everybody who is able to participate this was recorded on WSCS so if you know somebody in your circle that wasn't here and you would like to share it that will be made available on their website shortly and lastly I do want to say thank you to Dr. Rye and Prevea Health they have been the financial supporter of our Friday forums for several years and without financial support we would not be able to offer programming like this so truly thank you to you and Prevea Health and your continued support and partnership with the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce and if you have additional questions beyond I can get you in contact with them but we also have several folks I think in the room too that offer lots of benefits and programs and services that you might find beneficial for your teams when you go back to work so thank you