McCarthy, one of the nation’s largest employee-owned construction companies, will be honored this weekend as a Start! Fit-Friendly Company by the American Heart Association (AHA). McCarthy Central Division President Scott Wittkop will receive the Gold-level award during the AHA 2011 Metro St. Louis Start! Heart Walk opening festivities on Saturday, May 14 in Busch Stadium. Start! Fit-Friendly Companies are recognized by the AHA as employers who go above and beyond when it comes to employee health.
“McCarthy has a strong national partnership with the American Heart Association,” commented Tracy Brazelton, AHA executive director in St. Louis. “As a company, they have made great strides in focusing on improving employee health both here in St. Louis and across America. This award recognizes the best-of-the-best companies, and McCarthy is certainly one of these.”
Developed and launched in 2010, McCarthy Build for Life is a comprehensive wellness program designed to encourage all employees and their families to strive toward optimal mental, physical and emotional well-being. The program focuses on four key areas: awareness, prevention, activity, and lifestyle & stress.
“When it comes to our construction projects, our approach has always been to invest a significant effort up front to prevent issues before they occur,” noted McCarthy President and COO Derek Glanvill. “We have extended this same proactive approach to our Build for Life program, encouraging employees to make wellness a part of their everyday lives.”
To jump start McCarthy’s wellness program in 2010, the company launched an Activity Challenge. All 1,400 employees received a free pedometer and used an online step tracking program to log daily steps over a 3-month period. More than 50% of employees participated in the program, logging 184,974,999 steps. The 2011 Activity Challenge, expanded to include spouses and partners, began on May 1.
Designed as a grassroots program, McCarthy Build for Life is supported by Wellness Champions in each McCarthy office who communicate to employees in their region. Key McCarthy Build for Life program features include:
- Regular wellness webinars available to employees and their families
- Quarterly wellness newsletter delivered to homes of all employees, in partnership with the Mayo Clinic, and discount subscriptions to other health-related publications
- Complimentary health screenings for McCarthy employees and spouses/partners, including blood pressure screening, BMI/waist circumference checks, cholesterol/HDL/Glucose screenings, and Prostate Specific Antigen screenings
- Wellness areas at all-employee biannual meetings featuring material on health, nutrition, activity, and stress/lifestyle management
- Wide array of company-sponsored wellness employee events
About McCarthy
McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest commercial construction companies. Committed to the construction of high performance buildings, the company provides general contracting, construction management, and design-build services for healthcare, educational, commercial, parking structures, science and technology facilities; office buildings; tenant interiors; mixed-use; bridges; and highways. McCarthy has full-service offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Newport Beach, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and St. Louis. Repeatedly honored as a Best Place to Work, McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com.
