From the walking path and workout facility to the lighting system and building layout, wellness is a major component at the new Bob Evans Farms Inc. campus on Smith’s Mill Road.
The company relocated to New Albany in late October, coming from its longtime office campus in south Columbus.
The center of the 40-acre campus is the two-story, 135,000-square-foot main building. Company leaders knew about New Albany’s passion for health, and that helped convince them the city was a good place to locate their new office.
Informally and in official company surveys and focus groups, employees were asking for more health options, says Joe Eulberg, executive vice president of human resources, and the south Columbus campus just didn’t have the facilities to make those things happen.
Eulberg is heavily involved in the company’s corporate wellness programs and was also the executive lead for the new building. Throughout the process, he says, the key was to make employees’ personal fitness challenges less complicated.
“Sometimes it’s easier to remove barriers than to try to convince people to do something,” he says.
A one-mile path loops around the campus, offering an easy fitness option for walkers and runners, and it connects to the New Albany leisure trail system for the benefit of distance runners and cyclists. The path winds through orchards with chestnut and apple trees and strawberry, blueberry and raspberry plants, which the company’s chefs will begin to use in the test kitchen in the spring.
“We’re excited for it to get warm again so we can really utilize this space,” says Frances Janakievski, corporate communications manager.
On the first floor of the main building is the BEing My Best Fitness Center (“BE” for “Bob Evans”), filled with weight machines, free weights and cardio equipment. It also sports a fitness room with various classes – including boot camp, Zumba, Pilates and kickboxing – scheduled throughout the week, and members can also arrange for one-on-one and small group training there. Educational seminars on such topics as fad diets and workplace health habits are soon to join the offerings.
Bob Evans partnered with the YMCA of Central Ohio to operate the center, membership in which is voluntary and costs $20 per month. About a quarter of the 436 employees and contractors working at the Bob Evans headquarters were already center members as of early December.
“I think last count was over 110 members before the start of the January rush,” says Allison Kehlet, corporate wellness coordinator.
On the other side of the ground floor is the Farmer’s Market Café, which is open for breakfast and lunch as well as for to-go dinner orders. Though operated by hospitality group AVI Foodsystems, the employee cafeteria incorporates Bob Evans favorites into its menu – think sausage sandwiches and mashed potatoes.
Each of the café’s stations, which include fusion and Italian, has two daily specials: one standard and one healthful. There’s also a grab-and-go area that features a short menu of standards and salads, plus the Bob Evans Express, a new company concept for locations such as airports and hospitals that sells coffee, smoothies and the like.
The two-story test kitchen, arranged just like a Bob Evans restaurant, is smack in the center of the main building. That central location makes it much easier for the test kitchen employees to collaborate with the company’s other departments and participate in taste tests, and the state-of-the-art equipment helps entice other large companies to work with Bob Evans to develop new items, Eulberg says.
The kitchen is the hub of the company’s menu-tweaking efforts, which have recently included emphasis of a 450-calories-and-under menu, a gluten-free menu and an interest in local sourcing.
Other health-centered highlights include adjustable standing desks for employees who request them, “Burn Calories, Not Electricity” signs on the elevators to encourage use of stairs, tall fountains with purified water to make refilling water bottles easier and privacy rooms for employees who need a minute or two to collect their thoughts.
When the company moved to the building, each employee received an insulated bag containing a pedometer and a recycled cup for water, as well as earbuds, a notebook and a sausage-shaped USB drive.
A huge part of the effort to improve employee health – not just at the main campus, but across the entire company – was making the entirety of Bob Evans tobacco-free Jan. 1, 2013, including the office campus, all restaurants and all plants. To make that happen, the company partnered with the American Cancer Society to roll out a major smoking cessation program, giving employees who wanted to quit smoking a huge menu of options to help them do so and covering costs of items such as nicotine patches.
“We basically gave a year and a half notice,” Eulberg says.
The focus on wellness is also incorporated into the design of the LEED gold-certified building. Departments are separated in such a way as to get employees up and moving to and from meetings, and the company is strongly encouraging pediconferencing, especially once the weather gets warm.
“You go to four or five meetings, walking back and forth across the building, and you can get your 10,000 steps (for the day) pretty quick,” Eulberg says.
The roof of the main building is covered with solar panels, and the hanging lights inside are regulated by the amount of natural light coming in – they’ll dim when it’s sunny and intensify when it’s overcast. Research shows direct access to sunlight has positive effects on mood, and about 75 percent of employees have such direct access, says Eulberg.
Additional campus highlights include a pond, a pavilion and multiple areas emphasizing the company’s history.
The campus also features a training facility north of the main building and a shipping facility to the south.
Garth Bishop is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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