July 11, 2008  The Employee Wellness Department at Cleveland Clinic has distributed 4,000 buttons that say “Meeting in Progress.” Cleveland Clinic suggests that employees think about conducting business meetings on foot. The walking meetings idea chimes with current VMC efforts to promote walking by employees. For complete details, including campus walking maps, see the “Start!” section of the HealthPlus Web site. When Cleveland Clinic began promoting walking meetings, “The one thing we wanted to avoid was people feeling obligated to walk. We’ve been asking people to be sensitive to employees who may not be able to keep up,” said David Pauer, manager of Employee Wellness at Cleveland Clinic. “But if you’re meeting with people you’re really familiar with and know well, why sit in a room? Go for a walk!” Pauer regularly holds walking meetings, particularly if meeting with only one person. It gets cumbersome once you have more than four people, he said. If he has to sit in on a long conference call, he’ll usually grab his cell phone and start walking. Pauer said some research groups at Cleveland Clinic hold brainstorming sessions on foot with as many as 10 people — typically broken into two groups of five. When certain research teams get stuck on a question, they find that holding their discussion afoot “always breaks up the mental dam,” Pauer said. |
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