Norfolk Southern: Health and Wellness1. Background The Norfolk Southern Railway Corporation was established in 1982. This company has existed under many other names throughout United States history, with mergers and acquisitions continuing throughout the history of the railroad. In northern Indiana, the railroads were originally the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad, these two lines merged to become Penn Central. Penn Central went bankrupt and the United States government merged them with other railroads to form Conrail. In the early 2000s, the government then sold parts of Conrail to the nation's largest railroads, and Norfolk Southern purchased the Chicago Line that runs through northern Indiana. This is only a small part of the company's history, but it is the part that is important in the context of the Norfolk Southern Elkhart shipyard, where I currently work. 2. Human Resource Need The human resource situation that needs to be assessed at Elkhart Yard would be a subset of risk management and worker protection, specifically employee health and well-being. Many Norfolk Southern employees tend to be overweight or even overweight. The second ideal is healthy weight, this includes access to “tools and resources that any employee can use to help achieve and maintain a healthy weight” (HealthAhead). The final part of this program is Healthy in a Click, this is a computer program providing access to healthy living information including recipes, wellness topics and ways to get challenged to achieve fitness-related goals (HealthAhead). This program is clearly aimed at avoiding downtime as the company has demonstrated a 12% reduction in health-related absenteeism, which can translate into a huge gain in overall performance per employee (targets and GE objectives).