SAN FRANCISCO--Wellness programs that incorporate traditional and nontraditional approaches to promote healthy employee behavior are successful, said an executive of a major cereal and processed food maker.

The General Mills Inc. wellness program combines a variety of elements to encourage healthy practices among its 28,500 employees, said Dr. Timothy Crimmins, vp and director of the health, safety and environment group for General Mills in Minneapolis.

Traditional elements include onsite screenings of blood pressure and body mass index and Weight Watchers meetings; nutrition counselors; and nonsmoker incentives, Dr. Crimmins told attendees of America's Health Insurance Plans' annual meeting June 18-20 in San Francisco.

He said General Mills has experienced "robust" participation in its wellness programs. About 30% to 35% of employees are proactive about wellness and "that's a group of people we work really closely with," Dr. Crimmins said.

The company also has a variety of nontraditional offerings, such as meditation, yoga, dance clubs and walking meetings that employees "love" because these are enjoyable activities that help them lose weight, Dr. Crimmins said. "We're very successful."

In the company's cafeteria, calorie counts are posted to promote healthy eating habits. "This is really part of our culture," he said.

Utilizing his relationships with senior executives has helped secure buy-in for some unusual and somewhat costly initiatives, he said.

For example, the Minneapolis office has several treadmills outfitted with computers so employees can work and exercise at the same time, which employees have embraced. "It's just really expensive for the office," Dr. Crimmins said.

"I've had no trouble getting support from our senior management" for nontraditional health promotion techniques, Dr. Crimmins said.

The wellness initiatives have been extremely successful in improving the health of General Mills employees and have demonstrated results, with health care cost trends essentially flat last year, he said.

In 2005, 10% of the General Mills sales force had four or more health risk factors, 58% had three risk factors and 32% has two or fewer risk factors. This year, only 4% of the sales force had four or more risk factors, 25% had three risk factors and 71% had two or fewer.

"It's working," Dr. Crimmins said. "We can truly drive population health in the workplace."

The major challenge for the future is constantly finding new and creative activities to include in the wellness program, he said.