Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 by Jean Nidtech, in Queens, NY, and has built up a track record of over 40 years of helping people lose weight. The company has been built on the philosophy that "dieting is just one part of long-term weight management," and therefore has built an entire weight loss system around its food products. The company has been able to grow to popularity on the basis that it works, because it emphasizes mental, emotional and physical health all in a combined package (Weight Watchers, 2014). The Weight Watchers program includes education about nutrition and how to manage one's weight, but it also provides the tools needed to do this. Thus, there are booklets, pamphlets, online assistance, food products as well as meetings and other social organization that help to provide the sort of emotional and social support needed to help people change their daily habits and lose weight through developing good, healthy habits in place of the poor habits that created the weight issue in the first place (Weight Watchers, 2014).

The company began in the early 60s, but has grown rapidly since then. By the 1980s, it was worldwide, and a popular means of losing weight. It has now been purchased by a European parent company, but shares in Weight Watchers are still available and are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Weight Watchers has revenues in excess of $1.7 billion, and profits of $200 million (MSN Moneycentral, 2014). These figures have been relatively stable, testament to the enduring popularity of Weight Watchers, which is the result of program effectiveness and high brand recognition as an innovator and market leader among weight loss solutions.

The company has a scientific advisory board that seeks to ensure the efficacy of its products and programs, and also to find ways to improve on how Weight Watchers can help all people to manage their weight.

Incentives

Weight Watchers has a Corporate Solutions division that caters specifically to the corporate market. The Weight Watchers program is perfectly suited to the corporate market because of the emphasis on peer support, which is a key component of the mental and emotional health. When you are enrolled with your peers at work, it is easier for the group to support its members, and to help people deal with any issues that may arise, such as relapses or temptations.

The Weight Watchers corporate plan has a number of different benefits. It comes with the Weight Watchers online program, that allows enrollees to monitor their consumption and exercise, to schedule consumption and have 24/7 access to information, in real time, from their computer or mobile device.

Enrollees will also have access to Weight Watchers Meetings. These meetings will have an experienced leader. They may be peer group meetings within the company, or externally in the community. Either way is fine because Weight Watchers has built this flexibility into its program. Weight Watchers partners with Human Resources departments in order to provide this benefit for employees, so that the cost is shared as part of the benefits package. Weight Watchers is beneficial to its corporate clients because it can lower health care costs, which are a major cost for any business, both in terms of insurance costs and in terms of man-hours lost to illness and injury. Weight Watchers is therefore a solution that should appeal to any company, as it has a net positive value, and employees trust in the reliability and enduring value of the Weight Watchers program.

Success Stories

With its long history, Weight Watchers has helped tens of thousands of people transform themselves. There are a number of testimonials available from real people who have experienced real results. Here are a couple of testimonials from the company's website, to highlight how Weight Watchers helped them to realize their weight loss goals. Rhonda wanted to arrive at her 50th birthday with a healthy body and signed up online for Weight Watchers in order to make it happen. Her motivation in her own words: "My mother had hypertension and heart disease, and passed away from breast cancer. My father has had surgery for prostate cancer. I didn't have serious health issues yet, but I was overweight and I knew if I didn't make changes to my life, bigger health problems would arise."

Like a lot of people, Rhonda could not resist the classic comfort foods, but over time, those foods cause weight gain. Nobody wants to give up their favorite foods,...

Weight Watchers helped Rhonda to think differently about food. She went onto the company's website and started using some of the Weight Watchers healthy recipes. Like a lot of people, she shed some weight quickly, but then plateaued. But she kept working through it. She did her fitness -- just a little bit at first, but as she lost the weight she gained the energy needed to do more. She ate healthier versions of her favorite foods. Most importantly, she regained control over her eating habits, by minding what she ate, and doing more of her own cooking. Rhonda lost 64.2 pounds to go from 223 pounds to 158.8.
Big Clarence -- or at least he used to be Big Clarence, is one of the success stories of the Weight Watchers at work program. At 287.8 pounds, Clarence was only in his late 20s but was already down a path of being "Big" forever. Through the Weight Watchers at Work program, he decided to change that, because he was getting close to 300 pounds and didn't want to be a 300-pound man. He had seen people in his family try things like gastric bypass that didn't even work.

It was the ability to do Weight Watchers at work that convinced him -- it was too easy not to do it. What Weight Watchers taught Clarence was that his tendency to overeat was often an emotional response. Just knowing what was going on -- having that level of education that Weight Watchers provided, helped Clarence to start losing weight. He set a goal to run a 5K, and at first he couldn't go more than a few steps. "I could barely keep up with a power-walking elderly couple. I wanted to be able to run a 5K, and I knew I could." And he did. Over the past couple of year, Big Clarence has become just Clarence.

What worked best for Clarence was the support system that the Weight Watchers at Work program provided. He was held accountable by his peers, people had saw every week in the meeting. But the group was supportive, and there was always somebody around to answer his questions. That sense of community not only made Clarence feel good about having a support system, but he also felt accountable to others, like when you have a project and your team is counting on you to do your part. It's the same principle -- in that sense you are all working together to lose weight, and keep that weight off, and the power of the support group is a critical success factor for the Weight Watchers at Work program. There are many success stories with Weight Watchers, and the Weight Watcher at Work program. That's why so many people keep signing up, year after year, for 51 years and counting, because it works.

Reflection

In this work, I have provided information about the Weight Watchers company and the Weight Watchers for Work program. I have provided a history of the company, and a brief outline of how the program works. There are incentives that are used to help people lose weight. The "at Work" program involves hosting meetings at a job site, and utilizing the power of the peer group to motivate each other, and keep people on track.

The Weight Watchers program has been around so long because it has been so successful at helping people to lose weight. There are a number of testimonials with respect to how well the program works, from people who have enjoyed success with the program.

The company provides some of this information, as its website is geared to providing people what they need know to make their decisions. Because Weight Watchers is a publicly-traded company, there is also some information available online through the financial media. It is also good to gather information informally, talking to people who have used Weight Watchers, in particular to get a 'real world' sense of testimonials, unvarnished. So there are a few good sources of information to help learn about Weight Watchers and the programs it has to help people.

References

MSN Moneycentral. (2014). Weight Watchers International. Retrieved November 22, 2014 from http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/financials/fi-WTW?ocid=qbeb

Weight Watchers. (2014). About us. Weight Watchers. Retrieved November 22, 2014 from http://www.weightwatchers.com/about/his/history.aspx

Weight Watchers (2014). Read about someone like you. Weight Watchers. Retrieved November 29, 2014 from https://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?art_id=20291&tabnum=1&sc=3&subnav=health+ideas#section8