You spoke and we listened. We’re gathering and publishing results of our 2011 Gift Card Usage Survey and we’ll be including success stories in each eNews.

Health and Wellness Incentives

Wellness incentives have become good business. They reduce health care costs for employers and increase employee productivity.  To enhance participation, rewards are given to employees for filling out HRA’s (Health Risk Assessments). HRA’s are used to assess the lifestyle risk behaviors of individuals as part of the annual Periodic Health Assessment, work-site wellness program, or other community health activities.  Health and Wellness Programs are measurable; rewards can be given via a points system or for participating in healthy activities like joining a gym, or for achieving healthful milestones like losing weight, decreasing blood pressure or taking daily walks during breaks.

Here are a few ways that our survey respondents are using gift cards to engage, motivate and reward:

• From a hospital in PA: “Our organization provides gift cards to employees for successfully completing our Wellness initiatives.  By offering the gift cards we have increased our participation from 15% to 39%in the first year.  We also provide gift cards to employees as a token of appreciation for a successful year each year in December.
• A Blue Cross provider in PA: “By looking to take better care of the employees’ health, they are given credits toward gift card purchases as a reward, like going to see their PCP with regularity, exercising, nutrition counseling, etc.”
• Medicaid providers and some US states are providing incentives to consumers for keeping up with recommended and annual doctor visits. It has been proven that regular adult and child well visits (on the doctor recommended schedule) helps doctors catch illnesses early, resulting in fewer ER & hospital stays, thereby saving the US government money.
• A New York blood center gives “Gift cards on a measurable basis to keep our most loyal donors and supporters engaged to positively impact our frequency and retention metrics.

Stacey Sicurella is a 15 year marketing veteran, working in the Boston area for GiftCard Partners. Recent accomplishments include blogging with abandon, acquiring work-life balance and building amazing sand-castles with her children.