Groov-Pin attended the 2018 Providence Business News Healthiest Employers in Rhode Island awards luncheon on Thursday, August 9.
We are proud to have been recognized for our commitment to improving our employees’ health and wellness. We came in third place for healthiest employers in the 2-149 Employees category. We have many future plans for our wellness program and look forward to developing new ways to help our employees be healthier and happier.
During the luncheon, our project engineer, Brian Sylvestre, was recognized for his weight loss and healthier living journey in the ‘Healthiest Losers, Biggest Winners’ segment.
Brian’s Story:
Brian Sylvestre is a project engineer at Groov-Pin. He began his journey to better health in September of 2015 during our company business retreat. During the retreat, there was a presentation on wellness where employees were asked to evaluate their occupational, emotional, financial, and physical health.
After completing the evaluation, employees were asked to choose one of the categories and commit to something for 30 days that would improve their wellness.
Brian chose physical and committed to 30 minutes a day on the treadmill for 30 days. At this time, he had been diagnosed with diabetes, was insulin-dependent, had very high sugar numbers, and his weight was 270 lbs. His A1C level, which measures the glucose in the blood, was very high at 8.9. For reference, a “normal” A1C level is below 5.7.
After the 30-day challenge was over, Brian continued and after a year and a half, was down to 195 lbs. Through diet and exercise, he was also able to reduce the amount of insulin he had to take by half and his A1C level went down to 5.3.