Joel Fay

At GE, we’ve been hard at work building a culture of health through a program employees call HealthAhead. Our goal is to partner with GE employees and their families around the world to help them live and work in the healthiest way possible, decrease health-related absences and strive to limit the growing cost of healthcare. HealthAhead demonstrates how we take real steps towards better health for more people. Meet HealthAhead Hero Joel Fay, who literally walks the talk in keeping healthy.

Leaders across the company look for ways to support and get their teams involved in HealthAhead. To encourage his team to lose weight as part of his plant’s initiative to support healthy living, Joel Fay, a GE Lighting Plant Manager, created a “Thin to Win” competition and offered to run a mile for every pound the team lost. By the final weigh-in, the employees had lost a substantial 249 pounds.

“I think they got a lot of pleasure out of making me run, but it was a fun competition,” said Joel.

Within a week of the contest ending, Joel finished running all 249 miles. Two team members lost 61 and 48 pounds, respectively. In all, nearly 50 employees at the Lexington plant participated in the event.

“For me, the competition was a challenge. It motivated me to be accountable for what I said I would do,” says Joel. “It’s one thing to have a private goal, but when you put that goal on a poster that makes it different. You’d better live up to it.”

Read more at GE HealthAead.