Why your company should field a team at the Delta Dental–Elliot Corporate Road Race

Each August, runners and walkers fill the streets of downtown Manchester to compete in the largest road race — and largest corporate team-building exercise — in the state. The Delta Dental–Elliot Corporate Road Race 5K runs at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, August 8 and is currently enlisting captains to put together teams representing businesses from across New Hampshire.

Captains are responsible for promoting the race internally, recruiting a team, and getting everyone ready to run or walk. All participants can fundraise prior to the race to support the Solinsky Cancer Care Center at The Elliot.

Good for employee wellness ...

Corporate wellness programs are good for the bottom line. Research shows wellness programs help reduce health care costs, increase productivity, improve retention, lower stress levels, increase morale and more. A Harvard meta-analysis found that “medical costs fall by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs and that absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73 for every dollar spent.”

Tom Raffio is president and CEO at Northeast Delta Dental, which not only sponsors the event, but also makes it easy for employees to participate. The company charters a bus for the occasion, puts up a tent at the race and brings in food.

Raffio sees the event as a positive for both the participating employees and the business.

“It’s part of the wellness culture at Delta Dental,” Raffio says.

That wellness culture has made a significant impact on the people living it. “Looking at my own employees, they have had life-changing experiences,” he says. “A few people here who could barely do a 5K are now doing marathons.” He notes one success story that will culminate at the Corporate 5K this summer. “One gentleman in customer service lost 150 pounds,” Raffio says. “Now he’ll be at the Delta Dental Elliot Race in August.”

Dr. Greg Baxter, president of Elliot Health System and chief clinical officer for Solution Health, is an accomplished runner and has raced the Corporate 5K every year but one since 2003. He was on the emergency room staff back in ’03 and was on an Elliot sub-team of emergency medicine roadrunners that still runs to this day.

“Training together creates a longitudinal connection to teammates,” he says.

It’s also an accessible entry point for healthy habits.

“The distance is manageable,” Baxter says. “You can go from being on the couch to a 5K in a few months.”

The event becomes a company-wide focal point for The Elliot’s wellness initiatives each year. “We make a push starting in the spring to start promoting the road race coming,” he says. “It’s a celebration, a festival. We crescendo that as we move to the heat of the summer toward August.”

... and good for business

Raffio is an avid runner, but as the president of Northeast Delta Dental he’s also got an obligation to the bottom line. He and the company’s board see his investment in sponsoring road races as a good business strategy.

“Our corporate strategy is to get out in the community,” he explains. “We sponsor 100 races a year. We literally spend $300K annually on road racing sponsorships.” That wouldn’t happen if he and the board didn’t see tangible results from aligning the company with the communities it serves and the fitness culture of road racing.

In addition to team-building, participation in the race is a brand-building opportunity, demonstrating participating companies’ wellness-oriented cultures, their commitment to the community, and their support of the Solinsky Center and cancer care. Each race shirt is customized with the team’s company logo.

Race director John Mortimer says 165 companies fielded teams last year. Prior to COVID, in 2019, 206 teams participated. Mortimer is aiming to see the event return to those numbers.

... and good for captains

How does a company build a team as enthusiastic as the ones fielded by Northeast Delta Dental or The Elliot?

“It has to be done organically where you have a couple of ambassadors, cheerleaders in the company,” Raffio says. “And then eventually someone will be the champion in the company.”

One such champion is Amanda Quinlan, an attorney at McLane Middleton. McLane is also well known for fielding a large, and competitive, team. Quinlan is an accomplished runner and triathlete. She ran a blistering time of 17:52 in last year’s race. She also fielded a team of 33 from McLane for the race.

“What’s neat about being a captain,” Quinlan says, “is you can see who signed up from your company. You’re in charge of getting your company ready. If you’re competitive, that’s really cool. You get so many people out there. You network.

You have fun.”

The joy of friendly competition is motivating within a company and between different corporate teams. Quinlan says the faster runners on the McLane team set their sights on fast runners from other corporate teams; and there are a lot of fast runners at the 5K competing for age group wins.

That competition shows up in a great deal of team bonding, amplified by the company logos on the race shirts. “From a corporate standpoint, I see a lot of pride,” says Baxter. “BAE, Nixon Peabody, McLane ... the teams are very vibrant.”

A beloved tradition

This year, Mortimer says, will be the 31st running of the race that was once known by the state’s running community as Cigna Elliot Corporate 5K, until Northeast Delta Dental stepped in as the presenting sponsor. Mortimer’s company, Millennium Running, took over the race in 2016, adding the charity component. But he was already intimately familiar with the competition, having won it 20 years ago, when he was in college, setting a state record with his time of 14:21. That record stood until last year.

Runners come from far and wide to test themselves on the fast, flat course.

“It draws in a lot of people who aren’t from Manchester,” Quinlan says. “As somebody who wasn’t from Manchester, I remember coming a long way as a high school or college runner because it’s such a fast course. It’s a big deal for the state, too.”

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