A wellness rewards program is exactly what it sounds like, which is to say that the plan’s beneficiaries receive rewards for leading a healthy lifestyle, staying fit, adopting healthy habits, and abandoning unhealthy lifestyle choices. They act as both an incentive that encourages people to care more about their own wellness, as well as a reward system for those that exhibit healthy behavior.
Wellness Rewards Plans are Not Just for Businesses
Health incentive plans and rewards are not just limited to the commercial sector as they are frequently used by family members and relatives to encourage each other into leading a healthier lifestyle as well. However, the full potential of a carefully developed and customized wellness rewards program can only be realized at a commercial level. When an employer incentivizes the health of their employees, it can have positive impacts on the present and future well-being of hundreds, if not thousands of people at once.
How Wellness Rewards Programs Benefit the Business
A company of any size can only be as good as the people working for it, so it makes a lot of sense for the business to invest in preventive care. Incentivizing employee wellness should be beneficial for both employers and employees, but how successful the plan turns out to be is contingent on how well the plan was developed in relevance to the intended members.
Work with a wellness rewards program provider that has both the experience and the expertise to create custom plans for your company. Once a well-developed health incentive plan has been put into effect, the business will benefit from its effects in the following ways:
- Increased productivity: Fitter, healthier employees will always be more productive.
- Decreased sick days: When the overall health of your employees improves, the average number of sick days per year will drop.
- Decreased accident rate: Fit employees tend to remain a lot more alert, which automatically reduces their chances of being involved in an accident.
- Decreased medical insurance costs: If employees are making an active effort to stay healthy, they are much less likely to develop health conditions.
- Promoting health: Through incentivizing employee wellbeing, employers create a pro-health company culture.
- If the wellness rewards program is well designed, it can also help employees bust stress, decrease anxiety, and avoid depression.
- Wellness rewards plans boost Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) scores.
What Should be Rewarded: A General Overview
Setting aside the scale and implementation, for the time being, we can look at some established good habits, practices, and behaviors which should be rewarded for the best results.
- Good weight management (healthy BMI).
- Reducing and eventually quitting smoking.
- Admitting to and addressing substance addiction/abuse in time and with good intent.
- Participating and scoring highly on company-arranged fitness tests.
- Participating in company-arranged sporting/fitness events.
- Displaying behavior that shows more responsibility towards managing their existing health conditions.
- Following company guidelines for staying safe at work (wearing provided PPE for example).
Wellness incentives are not just about boosting productivity, saving health insurance costs, or anyone benefit for that matter. Wellness rewards programs are about it all. They are initiatives taken by an employer to improve/save the lives of their employees, as well as the future of the company as a whole.
