Many of you heard about my involvement in the Well City Milwaukee project when it launched in 2007. A collaboration of the City of Milwaukee, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, the Greater Milwaukee Committee, the YMCA and the Wellness Council of Wisconsin, Well City Milwaukee is an initiative to empower employers in the delivery of comprehensive worksite wellness programs by assisting them in the completion of the WELCOA Well Workplace Award Application over a 36-month period.
The goal of the project is to enhance the health and wellbeing of Milwaukee’s workforce in order to create a healthy and vibrant city.
The first phase of the Well City was a resounding success. The initiative engaged nearly 40 employers who collectively employed nearly 80,000 employees or 30 percent of Milwaukee’s workforce in award-winning, data-driven worksite wellness programs.
Milwaukee became the largest city in the nation to win a Well City USA award at the silver level and our efforts helped spawn projects in Racine, Oshkosh and Fox Cities.
Well City Milwaukee is gearing up to launch Phase Two, which will run from 2012-2014 and target 50 percent of Milwaukee’s workforce.
As you know, investing in worksite wellness is good business and over time can produce positive return on investment. A coalition of employers who make “wellness the way of work” can help produce a positive return for the whole city.
I would like to encourage all Milwaukee employers to consider signing on to the Well City Milwaukee project and to spread the word. This model provides the support and encouragement an employer needs in order to build a solid foundation for a data-driven, results-oriented worksite wellness program that can help make the most of the investment in total employee health and welfare benefit packages.
Employers who sign onto Well City Milwaukee by Dec. 31, 2011, will be included as Charter Members of Phase Two, for press release purposes. Please contact me for more information or call Gail Bennett, Well City Milwaukee assistant director, at (414) 274-0770 or www.wellcitymilwaukee.org.
Arvid R. “Dick” Tillmar is founder and president of Tillmar Connect LLC in Whitefish Bay. Tillmar co-chairs the leadership team of Well City Milwaukee. He can be reached at www.tillmarconnect.com.
