Your Monthly Check-Up: Incentivizing your Employees’ Healthy Lifestyles

A hot topic this year within both the incentive realm and the wellness realm has been the rise of obesity in America and the growing importance for health initiatives in the workplace. Incentive Magazine covers this topic in its November/December issue in an article titled “To Your Health” by senior editor Andrea Doyle. The main crux of the article focuses on wellness initiatives being not only good for your employees, but good for your bottom line by lowering insurance premiums.

Doyle’s article starts out by saying that, while most Americans are well aware of what it takes to be healthy, many are not willing to put forth the effort toward maintaining their health. She cites a study called “F is in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012,” which states, “By 2030, medical costs associated with treating preventable obesity-related diseases are estimated to increase by $48 billion to $66 billion in the US, and the loss in economic productivity could be between $390 billion and $580 billion annually by 2030.” This also translates to exorbitant medical costs spent on treating issues that are entirely preventable.

To combat this – and in direct response to employees spending more and more time in the office and generally sedentary – companies are offering wellness incentives to help raise awareness and offer motivation for choosing habits that have huge payoffs but are often very challenging to stick with, especially during holiday season and other times of year.

One such company noted in the article is Hallmark Business Connections, which offers 13 weeks of weight loss classes to employees. If an employee attends 12 of the 13 classes, the company pays for the program, according to Jennifer Patel, who leads Hallmark’s health and wellness team.

“A colleague lost almost 50 pounds as a result of participating in this program, and it has changed her life,” Patel says. “It’s also proof that if you provide opportunities and incentives for your employees to make behavior changes, amazing things can happen.”

Doyle points to another company in her article, FC USA, which has its own full-time wellness guru in Susan Levy Malandra – whose official title is Healthwise Coordinator for the company. While hiring a full-time health coordinator may be out of reach for many companies, the programs Malandra uses to motivate her colleagues are not.

Malandra, who has 20 years of teaching group fitness classes under her belt, uses pedometers, contests and organized runs to help motivate her FC USA colleagues. She also travels around the country and meets with all US-based employees for “Bio Age” consultations, which tests a variety of physical, nutritional and lifestyle factors to determine the employees overall well-being, or Bio Age.

Malandra notes that follow-up is key to success and she regularly checks in on employees’ progress and writes a monthly newsletter that includes healthy lifestyle tips and recipes. And as an incentive to stay on track or meet goals, FC USA offers trips, merchandise, raffles and cash rewards to its employees for maintaining their healthy lifestyles.

Implementing a wellness initiative at your company isn’t hard, but it does take time, creativity and the interest of your employees. The first steps are always the hardest, but if you can find ways to motivate your employees and incentivize their progress and goals, you’ll be that much closer to increased productivity and decreased medical costs. Plus, you’ll be setting up your employees for a lifetime of wellness, and there is truly nothing more important than your health!

Your Monthly Check-Up: Winning at Workplace Wellness

In the last month alone, several great articles have come to our attention focused on just how important wellness in the workplace is. Clearly this is not just a passing fad, but an issue of growing concern that is calling for immediate attention and action. Employees and companies as a whole are responding very positively to wellness incentives and fitness programs. Hopefully some of these stories will inspire you to instill a wellness initiative at your company – or at least change a few habits to benefit your own life.

To begin, an article in EXPERIENCE LIFE magazine (a publication of LIFE TIME FITNESS) titled “Healthy Profit” makes the case for employee wellness as a means for increasing productivity and reaping fiscal benefits. The article centers on three US companies – SAS, Patagonia and Hypertherm – that are putting the well-being of their employees first and rewarded handsomely in the form of low employee turnover and decreased medical plan costs.

The article points to a study published in the February 2012 issue of Health Affairs that found that “for every dollar invested in a comprehensive workplace wellness program, companies saved $3.27 in medical costs and $2.73 in costs related to absenteeism.” According to “Healthy Profits,”

…the days of simply tacking up a smoking-cessation poster and calling it a wellness program are quickly coming to an end. In a world of ballooning healthcare costs and exhausted employees, more businesses are adopting comprehensive workplace wellness programs that pay closer attention not just to the physical health of their workforces, but also to their employees’ overall sense of well-being.

A few examples of the initiatives these companies have adopted include onsite daycare, onsite health centers, subsidized healthy lunch programs, paid leave for parents of sick children, free yoga, paid time off to volunteer, wellness fairs and fitness club membership reimbursement. We’ll note that these companies are exceptional examples and not every organization is able to adopt all of these initiatives; however, making small changes now will go a long way with regard to your employees’ well-being.

The September/October issue of Premium Incentive Products also features a case study focused on employee wellness, titled “Working Toward Wellness at Hilton Head Health.” According to the article, Hilton Head Health, or H3, is a premiere health and wellness center in Hilton Head, SC.

When H3 implemented a physical fitness support system, “The benefits were immediate,” says president and CEO Robert Moore. “The first year was a 3 percent reduction in premiums, and the second year a 7 percent reduction at a time when premiums were increasing 12 to 15 percent.

In order to be effective, of course, a program such as this has to be widely accepted by the staff, and H3 is a great example of a program not only being widely accepted but successfully implemented and expanding, as well. “While H3 employees might know more about fitness and be healthier than the average worker, it also proved to be a challenge to increase the level of H3’s employees’ fitness. Enter the idea of incentives, challenges, classes and a little friendly competition to get the ball rolling.”

At H3, each activity is based on a point system.  A highly visible leader board is updated with top performers’ names and points awarded and employees are encouraged to compete not only with each other, but with themselves. Completing fitness classes, competing in races and taking healthy cooking classes are all eligible for points. Other types of activities include book club, volunteering, webinars, biking, swimming and walking. This shows that not only is H3 concerned with wellness, but the overall well-being of its employees.

As quoted in the article, CEO Moore says, “I’m a believer in incentives. You have to get people to try living healthier lives, then they develop the habit and they won’t want to give it up. There is no better way to do that with incentives.”

As a recognition company with our own wellness initiative, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. And especially with the holiday season quickly approaching, what better way to fend off cold and flu season than by adopting some of these wellness principles now!

Your Monthly Check-Up: The State of Corporate Wellness Programs in America

Please check out this infographic from Compliance and Safety, a vendor of safety videos. The graphic outlines some interesting statistics about workplace wellness initiatives and the growing importance of educating your employees about exercise and nutrition.

Your Monthly Check-Up: The Results are in!

Your Monthly Check-Up: An Increase in Health Insurance Costs Could Mean an Increase in Employee Wellness Programs

According to a new survey by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), the costs of employer-provided health care is anticipated to go up 7 percent in 2013, prompting employers to consider different cost-control measures, including upping rewards for employees who commit to healthy lifestyles.

The NBGH surveyed 342 businesses with regard to their views on providing health care coverage to their employees and found that an increasing number of employees are in favor of wellness programs in the workplace, which could bode well for decreasing employers’ insurance costs over time if implemented successfully.

A full 19 percent of the employers surveyed consider wellness programs that incentivize employees to improve their overall health to be a strong cost-control option, as reported by Employee Benefit News. While 48 percent use incentives to encourage participation in general, some incentivize based on specific outcomes, such as smoking cessation and curbing BMI or cholesterol levels.

What’s more, the survey found that employers plan to drastically increase the incentive amount for participating in a wellness program or committing to a healthy lifestyle. The benefit to the employee is twofold – good health and great incentives for maintaining it – while employers get the reduction in insurance costs that will allow them to spend the money saved to improve other areas of the business.

Read more on this topic here and here.

Your Monthly Check-Up: A New Way to Walk

Beginning in mid-June, Hinda launched its first-ever walking challenge sponsored by the Wellness Committee. The walking challenge is the first official Beta CarrotTeam event – which is Hinda’s recently formed wellness program. More than half of Hinda’s employees signed up to compete in this eight-week challenge.

After being issued pedometers, measuring stride length and participating in a weeklong trial run, employees were divided into 10 groups of six or seven participants each and the competition began. The idea is to wear the pedometer at all times and check in twice a week with designated team “secretaries” who record and save the steps using the pedometers’ included software.

Not only are there prizes for the winning walkers at the end of the challenge, but there are opportunities to win weekly if specific goals are met. For example, during Week 1 the daily step goal was 5,000 and everyone who hit that goal each day during that week was entered into a drawing. Week 2’s goal was 6,000 steps per day, with all walkers with over 42,000 steps for the week entered into a drawing for $20 in Hinda points. Each week, the step goal increases, the challenge gets harder and the prizes get better. The best part is that there is an equal opportunity for each walker to win.

When the competition wraps up mid-August, each participant of the winning team will win $75 in Hinda bucks. The second place team will win $50 in Hinda bucks for each walker. To win, each member of the team must have completed all eight weeks of the program and logged his or her steps on time. The two winning teams will have the two highest total combined steps.

Prizes for individuals include Top Performer – most steps taken of all participants; Most Improvement – highest percentage of steps from Week 1 to Week 8; and Challenge Champion – a random drawing of participants who completed all eight weeks. We will keep you posted on the big winners in a few weeks!

While it may sound simple and straightforward, this challenge is certainly not without its, well, challenges. A big one is remembering to wear your pedometer each day. Another is to remember to take it off before you do laundry or hop in the pool. Unfortunately, some of us had to learn these lessons the hard way.

But overall, the walking challenge thus far has been a success. Employees are coming together to share strategies, compare steps and commiserate over a low-step or forgotten pedometer day. And the most important thing is that people are finding ways to get up and moving throughout the day, which we desk jockeys all know is key.

Hinda’s Credit Manager Connie Iglesias says, “What’s great about the walking program is that, since teams are made up of people from different departments, it gives participants the opportunity to work with people who they don’t normally work with on a daily basis.” In this sense, it fosters a different kind of teamwork and strengthens the Hinda community as a whole.

Does this sound like a program that could be implemented at your office? Do you have a wellness initiative in place? What kinds of things does your office do to promote wellness and exercise? We’d love to hear your ideas and stories in the “Comments” section below!

Your Monthly Check-Up: Work Wellness Programs, Incentives and Social Media

Wellness incentives and workplace health initiatives are all the rage right now, with more and more companies adopting wellness programs and offering incentives to employees who commit to embarking on a healthier lifestyle. Workforce.com writer Michelle V. Rafter covers this topic in her recent article, titled “Can Social Media Produce Wellness Results?” In the article, Rafter focuses on New Jersey’s Chilton’s Hospital, which, in March 2011, entered a countrywide fitness challenge after trying for years to get its employees to better monitor their health.

According to the article, employees formed teams of six in competition with other local businesses to see who could eat the healthiest, walk the most or lose the most weight. During the 100-day challenge, participants used a private, Facebook-like social network to share results, cheer each other on and get involved socially. As an incentive to participate, Chilton Hospital offered $150 to each member of the winning team and $500 to the employee who lost the most weight. But it wasn’t necessarily the money that was driving would-be participants to sign up. “People wanted to be on the winning team,” says Julie McGovern, Chilton’s VP of Administration and HR.

The argument can be made that it’s now easier and perhaps more fun to be a part of a work-related wellness challenge or health initiative that has a social networking aspect attached to it. People spend so much of their time on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites during the day anyway, why not appeal to this interest and turn their social networking time into something a bit more productive, not to mention good for helping keep employee health care costs down.

While it’s certainly not necessary to incorporate social media into your wellness program, it is a good way for participants to interact, share results and track their goals. And as more employees are bringing their smartphones to work, it becomes easier for participants to stay connected to games and social media either on their own or in conjunction with their company’s wellness program.

With regard to the Chilton Hospital 100-day challenge, the 336 participants use an online game platform to track losing a total of 1,230 pounds, eating an additional 8,918 servings of fruit and vegetables and putting in 1,274 extra days of exercise, according to McGovern. “It wasn’t just exercise and eating better,” she says, as quoted in Rafter’s article, “People made a commitment to stop smoking, take stress management classes and control ongoing disease.”

Some companies are already reaping the benefits of employing healthier workers in the form of lower healthcare costs and fewer medical claims. According to the article, Sprint Nextel Corp. estimates it saved $1.1 million through a companywide fitness challenge launched in 2011. Read the Workforce.com article here and get more ideas about how your employees can benefit from developing a wellness program.

PS: June is Great Outdoors Month! Why not get outside and enjoy the weather and the free exercise opportunities while they last? Plan a hike, fly a kite with your kids or bike your local riverfront or shoreline trail!