Nurturing healthy lifestyle at workplace, the Qualfon’s way

With the influx of BPO companies in the Philippines, the job opportunities of the new graduates have also grew by leaps and bound.

Gone are the days that you can immediately hire a fresh graduate and will work with you for more than a year. Nowadays, job recruitment for call center agents are available anywhere even inside the malls with lots of additional perks not usually found in a local businesses.

What makes these BPO offices different from the usual working environment, however, is the working time from graveyard shift or time base on EST (Eastern Standard Time). In our case, it is a difference of 12 hours. It may have a good paying salary, a cool working environment but in this kind of job, there are consequences one must have to pay.

Number 1 on the list is the unhealthy lifestyle. It exposes you to work-related stress. So chances are, these young group would be developing early signs of hypertension and diabetes.  With the unavailability of healthier option meals, these executives resort to what is readily available from fast food and instant meals like noodles, burgers and fries. In recent study conducted by the Philippine Obesity Society,  1 out of 4 Filipinos is either obese or overweight.

But one BPO takes a step further in taking care of their employees. I meet with Ms. Aimee Martinez of Qualfon months ago and surprised with how big the company is. Qualfon is a global provider of contact center, back-office, and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. They offer a full suite of solutions and intelligent outsourcing locations in the US and across the globe.  They have been in business since 1995 in Mexico City where they are based.  Today, they have more than 10,000 employees servicing international base clients and operate in the Philippines, Guyana, Mexico, and the United States.

Qualfon Cebu started its operation in June 2006 and to date has more than 3, 700 employees. And part of their mission is to take care of their employees through Care, Give, Learn and Fun at Work Programs, essentially to create work life balance. One of Qualfon’s main projects is to promote a healthy lifestyle in the company.  But getting the young professionals to embrace this overnight is also a big challenge.  Hence, they have created Qualfon's Healthier You The Biggest Loser Challenge. They  have a core group of 22 employees who volunteered and committed themselves to a 2-month program by yours truly. It aim to create a healthier lifestyle, forming new habits that even at the end of this program they can still easily continue.

Qualfon hopes that the progress of this program will inspire all other employees to seriously take a look at healthy living.  Its success' will help promote employee buy ins and participants will serve as wellness ambassadors that when they fully implement Qualfon’s corporate wellness program, it will be an easy transition. In the process it will create a bigger awareness to the young working class on living a healthy lifestyle.

Nutrition is a big factor in losing weight and helping on the food and nutrition side is healthy food advocate Chef Chip Lopez, who will teach the participants cook and prepare their food right.

So for 8 weeks, these employees will undergo a rigorous Metafit  workout, which is mostly using your body as your gym equipment. Most common reason why people don’t exercise is because lack of time and budget. The workouts are usually short but with high intensity between 4-10 minutes. The METAFIT team will be with them three times a week to guide them on the exercises and will be giving them assignment workout for the rest of the week. Because BPO are usually using a high rise facility, the challenge of these contestants is using the stairs. But in the first week, they should climb three floors and increase it one floor per week. So after 8 weeks, they would be able to climb up to the work area in the 11th floor easily.

This is such a big challenge. What makes this challenge different from what I experienced in the biggest loser camp is that these guys have to do it while still working full time and have a family to feed.

The efforts of Qualfon is a good example on how a company should take care of their employees. Extra mile in efforts instead of spoon-feeding these employees on useless hours of aerobic or zumba session. Teaching or educating them on how to live a healthy lifestyle would have a long-term effect. This is something that the other BPOs should follow.