IT staffers shed 1,500 pounds

Computerworld - With his 50th birthday looming at the end of July in 2010, Frederick Curiel knew he had to lose weight. But as with many IT professionals, the demands of his job had put diet and exercise on the back burner.

"My lab [results] were 'frightening,' according to my doctor," recalls Curiel, a computer specialist in the Pleasanton, Calif., office of health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente. "She wanted me to go on medications." Curiel preferred to try diet and exercise, but he says, "I tried a bunch of things and had lost some weight, but I reached a plateau."

Fortunately for Curiel, he was about to get a little help from his IT co-workers.

At about the same time that Curiel needed a nudge, Philip Fasano, executive vice president and CIO of Kaiser Permanente, was looking for a little motivation of his own. Coming off an ankle injury, Fasano needed incentive to get back in shape.

Kaiser Permanente had already begun a companywide eight-week physical activity program and cross-country virtual journey called "Thrive Across America," which ran from May to June 2010. Employees and teams were encouraged to track their physical activity via a Web portal. Minutes of exercise were converted into miles on a cross-country journey.

But Fasano decided to take the program a step further by going public on the company's IdeaBook internal social network with his current weight and his goal of losing at least five pounds. He launched the "5x500 CIO Challenge" and invited the rest of the IT staff to join him in his quest.

Fasano posted weekly blogs to update his progress and receive feedback. Soon, other participants began blogging questions, celebrating their own weight-loss milestones and posting notes of encouragement. The CIO Challenge became one of the most active groups on IdeaBook. By the end of the seven-week program, 400 IT employees collectively lost some 1,500 pounds. Curiel broke through his weight-loss slump, eventually dropping a total of 50 pounds.

What's more, Fasano quickly learned that the challenge's benefits to the IT department outweighed the pounds lost.

"It clearly became an opportunity for us to engage in something in common regardless of place in the IT organization," Fasano says. "It also created a community of interest where we had a kinship and a partnership."

Moreover, people started asking Fasano how his ankle was recovering. "It allowed me to communicate directly with our IT employees in a way that I hadn't before -- in such a direct manner," he says.

Following the success of the first program, Kaiser Permanente last fall launched a 10-week program with a focus on walking. And Fasano once again put out a call to his team to join him in a special IT challenge. This time, the goal was for each participant to walk 10 miles per week, and 341 IT staffers signed on for the challenge. At the close of the program, the team had collectively covered some 27,000 miles; that's a greater distance than the circumference of the Earth at the equator 24,901.5 miles.