Tracking Employer Use of Financial Incentives to Reward Healthy Behaviors

Many employers and wellness professionals as well have been keeping an eye on the growing trend of awarding meaningful incentives – not just tee shirts, coffee mugs and other similar tokens for participation in the organization’s wellness program. By meaningful incentives, we’re talking real cash incentives.

We have been conducting a survey on the use of incentives in wellness programs and some 110 wellness managers have responded. We are about to begin reporting on the results of this important survey in our monthly management newsletter – Wellness Program Management Advisor. We will also share the significant survey findings at some point on this blog.

A survey released last year by Watson Wyatt Worldwide and the National Business Group on Health illustrated just how important a subject incentives

National Employee Wellness Program Participation Numbers

An average 19 percent of employees participate in programs administered by wellness managers who are either subscribers to Wellness Program Management Advisor, or members of the WellnessJunction.com online community.

Employee Participation Rates In Workplace Wellness Programs

* Average Employee Participation — 19%

* Corporate Programs — 22%

* Hospital Programs — 12.5%

Source: Workplace Wellness Management Survey, copyright Wellness Program Management Advisor

A caveat for wellness professionals, these numbers were gathered in 2004. As a result, it can be assumed that participation rates have changed. To determine that, the Wellness Management Information Center is mounting a new survey focused on participation in programs.

There have been other surveys in recent years on the topic of employee participation in wellness programs. But some of those surveys were among employees. The Wellness Program Management Advisor survey was among professional wellness managers whose duties include tracking participation.

The managers reported participation rates that ranged from a low of three percent to a high of 55 percent of total employees, our Workplace Wellness Management Survey found.

In some instances, rates are higher depending on the type of program being offered, a manager said.

Employee participation in wellness programs at one airline was reported at 18 percent, our survey found. And another manager reported “marketing some programs to families.”

For the most part, corporate wellness programs reported greater participation, ranging from 5 percent to 55 percent, the Wellness Program Management Advisor poll found.

The average participation rate among corporate programs is 22 percent, our survey found.

Hospital rates ranged from 10 percent to 25 percent of employees. There were too few participants from the university or government sectors to be included in the calculations.

Address: Wellness Program Management Advisor, 1913 Atlantic Ave., Suite S 200, Manasquan, NJ 08736; (732) 292-1100, http://www.wellnessjunction.com