CURE
DELIVERING
THE
Earning Their Way to Being Fit
More and more wellness program sponsors
are leveraging the full array of available
incentives, including merchandise, promotional products, gift cards, and travel. And
they are implementing points programs for
continuous engagement. These programs are
being integrated into enterprise recognition
and reward systems.
Wellness companies, intending to be full-service suppliers, are getting into incentives,
both administering them directly and partnering with incentive suppliers. CHC has
formed strategic alliances with gift card and
prepaid card suppliers. Neovia has managed
two points-based wellness programs on its
own and also partners with incentive houses.
And Alere cites Hallmark Business Connections as a preferred partner, while noting that
vendor choices are ultimately client decisions.
Keyes says Alere’s clients have awarded gift
cards to their employees for participating in
voluntary health screenings, as well as merchandise items like big-screen televisions and
even individual incentive travel opportunities
as grand prizes in engagement programs.
Cicotti says CHC has fulfilled retail gift cards
and gas cards and managed points-based programs using gift cards and branded awards.
“The key factor is to drive participation and
awareness, and incentives are a key way of
doing that,” says Cicotti.
At Neovia, Slay has witnessed program
participation rates jump from about 30 per-
cent to 80 percent once clients introduced
incentive awards, including gift cards, raffle
prizes, and promotional items (water bottles,
yoga mats, etc). “We encourage companies to
use incentives,” he says. “We counsel clients
entering two- or three-year wellness initiatives
to set aside budgets for incentives.”
A 900-employee video game company that
recently designed a new wellness program
with Neovia set aside $10,000 for pedometers
and high-end Camelbak water bottles for the
program’s launch—about $11 per employee.
The program will begin with a third-quarter
companywide health fair event, where the
firm will award the items to those who take
voluntary health assessments. Slay, however,
adds that the firm is looking to do raffles for
flat-screen TVs, iPads, or other electronic
Virgin HealthMiles (pictured above) is a
long-term engagement program in which
participants earn points, dubbed HealthMiles,
by walking and running. Virgin supplies
pedometers that record participants’ progress,
and enrollees can redeem their HealthMiles
for merchandise and retail gift cards from an
online awards platform. In addition, Virgin
conducts special point-earning periods semi-
annually, under the Quest Challenge ban-
ner, when all HealthMiles clients compete
for a single incentive travel grand prize. Past
reach a predetermined point total in the first
quarter, you receive an insurance discount in
the second quarter, and so on throughout the
year,” says Cicotti.
“We’re coming up with contests to keep
employees engaged. A big factor in our
success is the incentives.”
—Susan Piglia, Ochsner Health System
awards were trips to Napa Valley, New York
City, and the Virgin Islands.
The Cash Addiction
Perhaps to the chagrin of the incentive
industry, cash and financial incentives are
significant motivational drivers in wellness
programs, in the form of insurance premium
discounts (known as premium differentials),
reductions in deductibles, and company contributed dollars to health savings accounts.
At companies awarding premium differ-
entials, participation in wellness initiatives
is required, according to Cicotti. And while
some companies are awarding them on an
annual basis, others are aggressively engaging
employees with quarterly rewards. “If you
Ochsner conducts two special point-earning
periods each year that feature drawings for
incentive awards. In the past, iPads and iPods
were used. The organization also conducts
monthly events. “We’re constantly coming up
with challenges and contests to keep employ-
ees engaged and to push them past their
health goals,” notes Piglia. “A big factor in
our success is the incentives.”
According to Virgin’s statistics, more than
50 percent of Ochsner’s HealthMiles partici-
pants qualified for premium discounts in 2010.
The wellness program played a major role in
limiting the cost increase of Ochsner’s group
health plan to only three percent—greatly
undercutting the national average. The pro-
gram’s participation rate has been 85 percent,
