Implementation Of Wellness Incentives On The Rise

More and more employers are implementing wellness incentives and of course, disincentives in order to get employees to take part in the organization's wellness program - this program appear to be saving employers' good money.

According to the survey conducted by a company known as "Staying@Work", there is a big boost in the amount of companies that offer incentives for workers to take part in their wellness initiatives, which attempt to enhance workers' health and productivity.

In a lot of cases, wellness programs will need to first come up with a baseline in order to assess the level of health of the company staff population and figure out precisely where to focus their attention and of course, efforts.

In order to carryout this task, the company staff are typically asked to fill out an assessment questionnaire. Without knowing where to cut costs, the implementation of the wellness incentive will be a big joke.

According to experts, 4 in 5 employers will provide some kind of incentive to employees who take part in the company's wellness program by the end of the year 2012. Taking part in a company's wellness program appears to be worthwhile….at least as getting the company staff to take the time to fill out the questionnaire. Increase in participation in companies offering incentives to complete the risk appraisal is 46 percent versus 19 percent among the companies that aren't offering incentives.

In addition to this, the number of companies' offering disincentives - in form of higher premium payments for employees not taking part in wellness program - is on the rise. Within 2 years (from 2009 - 2011), the number of companies with zero participation penalty increased, 8% to 19 percent.

The survey conducted by Staying@Work indicated that companies that provided incentives had some really good outcome to show for their effort:

Returns per staff were up by 40 percent among companies with a high participation in wellness programs than among the firms with disappointing participation. The 40 percent different translated to sales-per-worker that were 132,000 dollars higher! But, to be quite honest, I have to comment that the research did not try to stress the point that profits soared by that figure following the introduction of the wellness incentives - that was simply what the distinction was. It may be that very effective workers are most likely to take part in a company's wellness initiative. It could also be industry, though the outcome of the assessment was portrayed as Industry-adjusted.

An employer of a big company got to save 1,350 dollars per worker each year! Okay…okay! This is a pretty large company, big enough that it was not completely insured. This simply means that any savings on health expenses go right to the bottom-line of the employer, and not to the insurers - If this information does not fall under the Good News category, I honestly do not know what will. This piece of info is like music to the ears of any employer of a large company. Though, the firm - a firm with a staff strength of 20,000 that saved 27 million dollars - noted that in addition to reduced healthcare expenses, they also recorded lesser lost days from disability expenses and unintended absences. Thankfully, smaller companies can also benefit greatly from this money saving initiative.

Obviously, wellness also contributes immensely to a company's bottom line.


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Jim Edholm is President of Business Benefits Insurance (BBI), an employee benefits planning firm in Andover, MA. He has worked with employers for more than 25 years and can be contacted at (978) 474-4730, via his website (http://www.bbibenefits.com), or via e-mail (jedholm@bbibenefits.com ).