US - Despite the recession, more big companies are paying to encourage employees to get healthier.
From a new study by Watson Wyatt and the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), 58% of companies surveyed now offer wellness programmes, up from 43% in 2007. The percentage of companies paying employees to take on healthy habits like exercising more and eating less junk food have also increased from 53% in 2008 to 61% this year.
Another survey by Towers Perrin showed that among companies which do not have programmes in place, 33% said they plan to start one, while 23% intend to introduce or increase financial rewards for employees who "get off the couch" and eat healthily.
"Companies that offer financial incentives report significantly higher participation in wellness programmes," notes the Watson Wyatt-NBGH study.
This rising trend streams from the increased costs of health benefits, where a large and growing component of the cost is a result of chronic diseases like heart disease, often from unhealthy behaviours. "Given that many employers are staggering under health-insurance costs linked to these diseases, prevention should be a no-brainer," says Rachel Permuth-Levine, deputy director at the National Institutes of Health.
In 2004, IBM launched five wellness programmes aimed to encourage employees to work out more, lose weight, eat better, quit smoking and heed preventive medical advice. Including a programme designed to encourage healthy habits in employees' children, Big Blue spent about S$189 million on wellness, mostly as cash rewards of up to S$436 per employee annually.
Other companies like MeadWestvaco hired outsiders for their wellness programmes. The company chose Virgin HealthMiles to design a wellness regime centered on pedometers, which counts employees' steps and points that can be exchanged for up to S$727 a year in cash or gift cards.
The payoff for employers come in the form of reduced healthcare claims, says a report in Time. According to a nonprofit research group called the Wellness Councils of America, for every dollar spent on helping employees get healthier, the company can expect to save S$4 in healthcare expenses.
"In productivity and health-care costs combined, we've saved about S$145 million over the past three years," says Joyce Young, IBM's director of wellness.
