Press Release

Healthy Initiatives Are Key To Success For Full Compass Systems
Programs have Positive Effect on Employees and Company Growth
November 4th, 2010

Madison, WI - Full Compass Systems is pleased to announce their initial success in the company's efforts to create a healthier work environment. As one of the country's top dealers of professional audio, video, A/V and lighting equipment, Full Compass envisions this effort as another positive enhancement to their corporate culture and believes it has been an additional catalyst in helping the company achieve record sales for the year.

The health initiatives at Full Compass began in 2008, when plans for the company's new corporate headquarters were just taking shape. Full Compass realized that its new location on Madison's far west side offered limited lunch options for its 170 employees. The solution was to add an on-site restaurant, called The Backstage Bistro that would offer employees both convenience and higher quality food. Executive Chef Don Olson and his staff plan and prepare a variety of food choices daily with many of the dishes featuring local, organic produce, as well as fresh herbs grown directly from Full Compass' own herb garden.

More recently, Susan Lipp, Chairman of Full Compass, saw another opportunity to instill a healthy mindset in her employees by arranging for Weight Watchers to conduct weekly on-site meetings. The program attracted over 17 people to its first 13-week session and the group lost a combined total of 294.6 pounds. Lipp knew that weight loss success is more sustainable when participants continue to discuss meeting topics throughout the week. Open dialog was encouraged and, combined with some very noticeable physical changes, quickly got the attention of more employees. Eventually much of Full Compass was engaged in health related conversations. Recently, Full Compass started their second Weight Watchers session in which participation increased to 23 members.

The Backstage Bistro played another important role in the culture-changing efforts at Full Compass. A key component of Weight Watchers is the point values that are assigned to all foods, which participants use to track their daily totals. To support this system, Chef Don assigns points to every item on the daily menus. Ultimately, even the employees not enrolled in the program began to pay attention to the point system, and discussions of food choices are now the norm during lunchtime.

"Even with a tough economy, we knew that our business model was fine," said Susan Lipp. "Focusing instead on our people and their health has actually invigorated our approach to business," she added.

Full Compass Systems has made great strides to provide healthy options for their employees and help them to be successful in their health goals. Today, employees are eating better, feeling better and working better. With double-digit growth in business, Full Compass demonstrates that there are other benefits to a healthy company culture.