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Edgewater Bank Healthy Lifestyle Focus Provides Huge ROI to Employees and Families

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When Edgewater Bank of St. Joseph entered two relay teams into this past weekend’s Detroit Marathon, it wasn’t just a fluke or a one-off experience. It actually comes three years after the entire staff at the St. Joseph-based institution decided to focus on healthy lifestyle topics as a team and is simply another great outcome of a remarkable change in attitudes, lifestyles and team work.

That sea change in health, exercise and nutrition led to a great day in Motown for nine of the bank’s employees and a family member, but more on that in a moment. Let’s go back to the beginning.

It was 2015 when bank President Rick Dyer’s team launched the effort. He says they decided to focus on healthy lifestyle topics as a bank, and partnered with Lakeland Health to begin discussions about some form of health issue at every all-employee staff meeting. They took up a wide range of topics like nutrition, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and even things like, “you are what you drink.”

It wasn’t all talk, however, as Dyer offered up bank-paid volunteer biometric testing for every employee. Lakeland met with all employees twice — one for blood and once to confidentially discuss the results of the biometric testing.
As a result, each employee gained a whole new understanding of their results — both the good and the bad. Lakeland then worked with each employee to establish a plan to address areas of concern. While the bank did not know individual test results, Dyer says, “I knew how we looked bank-wide in key health areas, and we based employee meeting topics on the actual biometric tests.”

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While everyone responds differently to health reports, one employee — Sandi Kopach, who manages the bank’s Royalton Township branch — did not like her biometric results and immediately decided to do something about it. She took total control of her lifestyle and ended up losing more than 100-lbs. In fact, she was one of two finalists for the state-wide Governor’s Fitness Award for conquering obesity, and actually won the state-wide People’s Choice Award for her story. You can read about that by clicking this link: http://michiganfitness.org/gfa-2018-winners

When year two rolled around, Dyer says that once again the bank paid for biometric testing updates, which was great because all employees had baseline results from the previous year and could see tangible results on how their ongoing efforts were impacting key biometric levels. He says, however, “This time we added a component. If an employee met two healthy lifestyle requirements (biometric testing and attending an education session by Lakeland on advance planning) plus accomplished two of five other healthy lifestyle goals (things like, go to the dentist, have an annual physical, run/walk a 5K, attend a series of meetings like smoking cessation or weight loss, and so on) between March and October, we paid them $250 in cash to reimburse them for part of their health insurance premiums. We ended up paying that to more than 90-percent of our employees.”

The Edgewater management team didn’t just leave it up to individuals to carry the load, they helped remove temptations. Dyer says, “We quit having pizza and Diet Coke for employees, and now have veggie trays and water.  We ordered water coolers and challenge everyone to drink more water.” Dyer admits, “I was a 3 cans a day Diet Coke drinker. I have not had Diet Coke or soda for 18 months now!  Birthday treats started to change from cookies and cake to fruit and healthy snacks.”

To keep the ball rolling, for this year, Edgewater upped the ante again by adding spouses into the mix. All spouses now have the option to get their biometric testing done, confidentially and completely covered by the bank. Rick says, “We had several spouses who met with Lakeland for testing and results, and we also kept the ‘rebate’ program in place for 2018, but changed a few of the healthy lifestyle options.” He explains,”One of the required educational sessions was a Lakeland-led meeting on being an informed medical consumer (such as what questions to ask, how to understand prescriptions and costs, and similar information). Once again dental and doctor visits are on the list, but we also added volunteering for a non-profit during the year because we believed volunteering to help others was part of a healthy lifestyle.” He’s confident it’s still working well, saying, “I’m sure we will pay about 95-percent of our employees again this year, and they got a bonus if their spouse participated.”

The bottom line for Edgewater? Dyer says, “We have a lot of employees that take health issues very seriously now,” but he adds, “It is not just Lakeland, we had Marydawn (Taggart) come over from Maddog for one of our employee meetings to talk about keeping your body moving and not becoming a coach potato.”

The proof is also on the scale. He says, “We’ve easily lost over 250 pounds as a bank over the last few years. I’ve lost about 35 pounds myself over the past year or so.”

It has continued to catch on, too. Rick is an avid runner, and quite often runs over the lunch hour. He says, “I’ve now got a number of other employees who are running at lunch so our friends at Pearson Construction are currently in the process of adding an additional shower at our main office because of the demand. That’s an expense we didn’t even think twice about. There are days when a  couple employees may run at lunch, but it is also interesting to watch what happens at 5:00pm. There are days that four or five employees leave the building in their workout clothes versus their work clothes. They are off to run, walk, or visit with Marydawn.” Her Maddog 5/1: Revolutionary Fitness studio is just yards away from the back door to the bank.

So, essentially, the Detroit Marathon idea was just an outcome of a conversation about nutrition, races that employees were walking or running and the like. Dyer got word that the Detroit race had a relay option for the 26.2 mile event and he asked if there were four other employees who would like to join him in the relay. He says, “I ended up hearing from eight employees, so we formed two teams (9 employees plus Maria Kibler’s daughter Kayleigh).”

Dyer says it was fun planning for it and talking about it, adding, “We’ve run a lot of miles this summer getting ready for it. Only three of us have ever run a marathon – Maria, Andrea, and me. No one else had even been to a marathon event.” He says that even though they didn’t individually run 26.2 miles each, they ran with the full marathon and were very much part of the festivities. He says the five legs were 6.4 miles, 6.1 miles, 6.7 miles, 2.9 miles, and 4.3 miles. The first leg started in Detroit and went over the Ambassador Bridge to Canada, the second leg started in Canada and ran the tunnel.” The camaraderie is outstanding, Dyer says, “We all met in Detroit Saturday night and had dinner together, and most spouses or significant others attended with the employees.”

Dyer is extremely, and rightfully, proud of his Edgewater Bank team. He says of the marathon, “It was just fun and, obviously, consistent with our healthy lifestyle theme. I asked about next year. I’m pretty sure not only will we participate again, but we might end up with three teams instead of just two.”

Edgewater Bank…taking their quality of life into their own hands for several years now, and loving (almost) every minute of it.

Based in Saint Joseph, Edgewater Bank provides commercial, mortgage, and consumer loan and deposit banking services from 6 offices in St. Joseph, Bridgman, Buchanan, Coloma, Fremont, and Royalton Township. Edgewater Bancorp’s common stock is listed under the symbol “EGDW.”