Posts Tagged ‘health and wellness program’

Lower Health Care Costs with Healthy Incentives

Monday, April 1st, 2013

As health care costs are on the rise many companies scramble to find the best way to counter the issue and the answer could be ‘in the incentives.’

Aon Hewitt just released a survey from 800 large and mid-sized U.S. employers, representing more than 7 million U.S. employees and found that 83 percent offer employee incentives for participation in a variety of wellness programs that strive to improve employees health. Out of these 83 percent:

  • 79 percent offer incentives in the form of a reward
  • 5 percent offer incentives in the form of a consequence
  • 16 percent offer a mix of both rewards and consequences

Employers saw a number of positive results stem from the sue of incentives:

  • More than half reported improved health behaviors and/or an increase in employee engagement
  • Almost half believed there was positive impact on employee morale, satisfaction and/or attitudes
  • 44% saw changes in health risks

While reducing health care costs is a top concern, developing a health-conscious culture within your workforce should play a major role. One great way to set a healthy atmosphere is to reward employees with healthy incentives like low denomination gift cards to Whole Foods Market or CVS, partnering with a local gym to offer membership specials, or give extra vacation days to those that meet the goals like weight loss or lower cholesterol.

Fostering a healthier workforce doesn’t need to be looked at as a challenge, but rather an opportunity. One that, if done right, could decrease high absenteeism, increase employee engagement and motivation, and in the long run could lower health care costs for both employees and the company.









The author:

Lauren McAuley is on the marketing team at GiftCard Partners. She is a recent graduate who enjoys diving head first into several aspects of the business including social media, graphic design, marketing, business development and public relations. Her passion for challenging herself keeps her trying new things every chance she gets, vegetable lasagna this week, maybe skydiving next week?

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Gift Cards, Perfect Workplace Social Incentive

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Although the roots of the term “social incentives” goes back to the positive feelings humans gain when interacting with friends and peers; the term and concept has been leveraged in the workplace with great success. Historically, social incentives include the positive feedback one receives from peers, and even the presence of friends can be considered a social incentive.

In the workplace, it has been proven that the presence of friends affects worker’s attitude, behavior and their levels of productivity. Employers can help forge new friendships and relationships in the workplace by formalizing social incentives as part of their ongoing motivation, recognition and rewards programs.

Employers would thereby use the concept of social incentives as a way to encourage teams of coworkers to work together for common goals. Teams, cross-functional teams or randomly assembled  groups can join forces in a health and wellness program to collectively improve a workplace health and wellbeing outcomes, while driving individuals’ positive behaviors, keeping participants engaged and ultimately, drive results.

Where’s the proof? In the article Increase Participation with Social Incentives, by Wellsource; it is reported that a rate of 64% participation was garnered for individuals on a team, versus 44% participation for those in the same program, with the same incentive, but without being part of a team.

Now add a carrot like gift cards for successful participation, reaching milestones, and continued engagement and you are employing a well-rounded idea to keep your programs fresh. Why gift cards? Rewarding with a gift card like The Cheesecake Factory or Subway and the teams can dine together or get healthy take-out together to further develop the Comradery created by your program.

Are you encouraging teams to work together for common goals and individual productivity?

Source: Wellsource: Increase Participation with Social Incentives

The author:

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.

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A Health and Wellness Cultural Revolution, Make Your Workplace a Part of it!

Friday, September 16th, 2011

This article was brought to our attention by GCP’s co-founder, Ed Shulkin (thank you Ed!).  It’s enlightening and heartening to know that there are companies out there that, like GCP, are
striving for a complete balance of work-life. This article outlines the importance of promoting 5 factors of well-being into the workplace lives: career, social, financial, physical and community well-being. BUT, the true gems of this article are in the depth of the interviews and stories of how these factors are integrated into the cultures of companies like Zappos.

From Return on Performance eBook

We are introduced to the concept of empowering workers’ real personalities to come forward, which allows hidden special talents to shine through, thereby creating a full-on well-centric workplace culture. Sounds like simple and basic HR-speak? Not if your one of these companies doing it right…it’s brilliant and often overlooked.

I hope this article inspires you to adopt a well-being workplace philosophy…summarizing won’t do it justice, read on:  Creating a culture of well-being by Return On Performance Magazine(ROP).

 

 

 

The author:

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.

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Posted in General, Health & Wellness, Incentives & Engagement, Remote Workforce & Working-Mom | No Comments »