Corporate culture

By
Leslie Aylsworth
Posted May 1st, 2000

Running keeps employees healthy and happy.
They run for the camaraderie.
They run for the challenge.
But most of all, they run because it’s fun. Every year, hundreds of co-workers from companies such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, B.F. Goodrich Aerospace Aircraft Systems, Cellular One, and Home Depot sign up as a team to run in the KeyBank Vermont City Marathon.
When the Marathon began 12 years ago, it was one of the first in the country to offer the option of running the 26.2 miles as part of a relay team. “People want to be a part of the biggest sporting event in Vermont,” says Andrea Riha-Sisino, KeyBank Vermont City Marathon’s executive director. “It’s so much fun and many people want to be a part of the Marathon without having to run the whole thing.”
Being on a relay team is the perfect way to do that. Each team member must complete at least one of the 3.3-, 5.4-, 6.4-, 5.5- or 5.6-mile legs before passing a yellow band to the next team runner. Teams can have two to five members who run on the same course as the full marathon. Just as there are age divisions for the male and female marathoners, so are there divisions for nearly 600 relay teams.
In 1990, the Marathon’s second year, the Corporate Challenge was initiated. “We started the Corporate Challenge as a way to involve companies and to encourage staff camaraderie,” says Riha-Sisino. Corporate Challenge teams are comprised of small business teams (less than 50 employees) and large business teams (more than 50 employees).
“Over the past 20 years, companies have been trying to create a good work climate by developing more cooperation, a better sense of community, and a good work atmosphere,” says Judd Allen, Ph.D. and president of HealthCulture.com. “Participation in something like the marathon helps employees build a greater commitment to work and each other,” he adds.
“In Vermont, only a handful of companies and organizations have structured health promotion and wellness programs, and they are mostly the larger companies. Races like the Vermont City Marathon are one of the ways small business employers can show they care about the health of their employees,” Allen notes.
In recent years, an increasing number of Vermont companies have been offering health-related incentives to employees. For example, Dufresne-Henry, which has fewer than 50 employees, pays the registration fee for any employees wanting to participate in the Marathon as an individual or on a team. This year, four Dufresne-Henry teams are receiving this employee benefit.
Many larger Vermont corporations recognize the value of healthy, happy employees and so they include the Marathon in their company’s wellness program. John Gresco of Home Depot, Vermont City Marathon’s newest corporate sponsor, says that it is good for Home Depot that their employees get involved with the Marathon. Health and wellness are part of Home Depot’s culture, and employee relay teams from stores and offices across the Northeast come to Burlington every Memorial Day weekend to run in the Marathon, even though that is Home Depot’s biggest sales weekend of the year.
Many corporations also see the Marathon as an opportunity to reach out to all employees, not just elite athletes. “It has evolved into a challenge,” says Cellular One’s Tag Carpenter. “In the past several years, 90 percent of our team members have started with little running experience. Some are overweight, some are recovering from an injury, and some have run less than a mile in their lives. Overall, the most encouraging thing is to see non-athletes get out there and succeed,” Carpenter says.
Each year about half of Cellular One’s runners are repeats and half are new to the Marathon. Two runners who ran for the first time on a relay team last year will return this year to run the entire race. One of last year’s runners has lost 30 pounds.
Carpenter believes that the motivation of a big event and co-worker support are important to Cellular One’s relay teams, which usually end up challenging each other and finishing within close times of one another. But the company also offers an incentive program for its employee’s healthy activities. Each month, when an employee has completed at least three half-hour workouts a week, they can be entered in a drawing to win a small prize.
“When people are active and feeling good, they do better at work, so everyone benefits,” says Jeff Stone of Key Bank, the Marathon’s namesake sponsor. “We strive to create a balance between family and work and the Marathon covers it all—family, fitness and fun. It is also great for team building. When people run and train together, they can enjoy the company of co-workers whom they don’t work with everyday.”
Each year, Key Bank has 15 relay teams, several marathoners and dozens of volunteers participating in the race. Stone says this marathon is just a piece of Key Bank’s strong, company-wide sense of wellness and fitness. Key Bank sponsors several on-going employee wellness programs and sporting events across the country. The Vermont City Marathon, ranked on the top-10 list of “Best Marathons in North America” by The Ultimate Guide to Marathons, is Key Bank’s biggest event in the Northeast and a chance for all their employees to show community spirit.
“You can’t be around the city in the month of May and not know the Marathon is happening,” says Stone. “There are lots of reasons people do it—a sense of wanting to be involved, the excitement of the event, the competition of working together and…it’s a lot of fun.”