Alcoa Keeps It Light

At Alcoa both the metals and employees are lightweight. For the third year in a row the Rosemont, Illinois-based lightweight metal manufacturer has been named the World's Most Active Organization.

The distinction is granted by the Global Corporate Challenge, which works with businesses across the world to improve employee health, performance and engagement. Alcoa was the top performer among 1,200 organizations that took part in the challenge.

Alcoa set a goal of having 300,000 participants from 185 countries around the world take at least 10,000 steps a day. Employees achieved more than 24 billion steps, an average of 14,098 steps a day.

 “Alcoa is committed to helping our employees live their best lives possible by offering effective tools and programs, like the GCC, to improve health and fitness,” said Kevin McKnight, Alcoa’s chief sustainability officer and VP of environment, health and safety. “We are extremely proud of what our employees have accomplished over the last three years; increasing physical activity, improving their health and working hard towards achieving these common goals which are so important to both our employees and the workplace.”

The Global Corporate Challenge was founded in 2003 and tackles three major lifestyle related factors that can impact employee performance: lack of physical activity, poor diet and lack of sleep.

While recognition is flattering, many companies are still undecided as to whether or not wellness programs are capable of delivering a hard ROI or instead act as more of an employee engagement tool.

A 2014 Harvard Business Review study found that companies with a wellness program saw a 1-2 percent increase in yearly health care costs, while those companies without them saw a 7 percent increase in costs.