In recent years many businesses have taken creative approaches, using trips and premiums to motivate employees to do a better job—a better job that usually involves reaching and surpassing sales goals. We’ve all heard of the insurance rep who wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.

Lately we’ve heard of a marathon-based incentive program that we hope will become a standard within American businesses. It also makes us wish we had done better in that required economics course back in the Arts and Sciences program so that we might pursue, at this late date, a new career in something called “securitized deferred obligations”—which we interpret to mean making a commission by offering to lend real liquid money against assets (such as long-term seller mortgages, money inherited but not liquid, real goods collections, state lottery winnings, etc.) that are at the moment not so liquid. (How’d I do on that? Am I even in the ballpark? Or is my Economics 101 teacher again chuckling behind her palm, wondering how such a nincompoop ever got accepted to college?)

The incentives this company offers also churns up the ol’ memory circuits regarding running perks offered by American companies in the bad ol’ days. But I’ll defer that until later in this column. Meanwhile, get this innovative thinking:

The largest originator and servicer of “securitized deferred obligations” in the United States, J.G. Wentworth (established in 1992 and based in Philadelphia), has a program in place wherein employees who take up running and are serious enough about it to enter races, receive one point for each mile raced (i.e., 5K = 3 points, 10K = 6 points, Western States 100 = 100 points, etc.), with 120 points logged within a seven-month period earning them an all-expenses-paid trip to the marathon of their choice. These marathons have included Los Angeles, New York, Vermont, Grandma’s (in Duluth, Minnesota), Adirondack (Schroon Lake, New York), Royal Victoria (in Canada’s beautiful British Columbia), and London.

This past April, J.G. Wentworth sent 30 of its employees to the London Marathon. The entire company has only 250 employees. Michael Goodman, executive vice president and chief operating officer (who, in a photo of a group of the Wentworth Marathon Training Gang that appeared in a newspaper story, looks young enough to still be in college) puts it this way: “Running is the most effective corporate training program we have. It promotes healthy living. It promotes teamwork. And it provides a common goal with an uncommon reward.”

Michael didn’t start out as a serious runner. He began as a serious asthmatic. For 12 years he’s gone through three inhalers and 400mg of theophlynn every day. Lured to a running program by longtime runner Alpha Nickelberry (Wentworth’s director of sales), Michael went from zero miles per week at Thanksgiving of 1998 to an average of 40 miles per week, to completing four marathons in 1999. Michael admits the marathons weren’t at a pace that will threaten the frontrunners, but for a new marathoner, durability, not intense speed, is the goal.

Once committed to the program, the Wentworth Wobblers find themselves going through the classic cycles of dedicated marathoners, motivating each other by running in small groups several times a week at 5:00 A.M. in either Central Park or along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.

There’s no doubt a commitment to the training brings co-workers closer together, and it offers a unique opportunity for employees who would normally have little if any contact with other workers to train and race together, and perhaps in the process bring the company closer together. At Wentworth even the nonrunners are enthusiastic: they cheer on their co-workers at their races, put together pasta-loading parties before they leave for their races, and stage welcome-home parties as though they were a professional sports team—which in a sense they are.

The benefits to Wentworth are obvious: teamwork among employees that would be impossible to forge in any other crucible, employees with more energy, healthier employees, happier employees, committed employees. The downside? The occasional case of tendinitis or a few days of walking funny to meetings following completing a marathon. The long-distance employees obviously aren’t going to be the ones costing the company’s medical carrier a fortune.

Long-distance running lowers cholesterol (and the threat of heart disease), lowers body weight, builds muscle, lowers stress, lowers blood pressure, and gives the gang something besides ball scores to talk about at the water cooler. The endorphins generated on a long run elevate mood and promote healthier skin, regularity (very important for people who spend a lot of time sitting in offices and meetings), better diet, and stamina.

Michael Goodman isn’t aware of similar programs in other corporations. Which is not only unfortunate but tragic in the sense that the mortality rate among American employees continues to rise as their general health continues to plummet. According to the Surgeon General, obesity has risen to the status of epidemic in the United States. And smoking-related deaths continue to account for 434,000 American lives per year (more than alcohol-related deaths, AIDS, auto accidents, homicide, illegal drugs, fires, and suicides combined). Neither obesity nor smoking tend to accompany the marathon lifestyle.