Penalizing overweight employees

Japan introduced a revolutionary concept to reduce healthcare costs, they started penalizing overweight employees. While many people consider this discrimination, it is starting to catch on with many employers, especially those looking to cut costs. States like Alabama have jumped on board with this initiative and they are also charging overweight employees more money to compensate for their rising healthcare costs.

As the percentage of overweight workers is increasing, the healthcare costs are starting to climb. Overweight employees tend to have more health problems than healthier employees. They usually have to visit the doctor more and they often have an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and a several other health problems.

Over half of American employers feel that overweight employees and smoking employees should pay more money for their health insurance because they are the reason why the health insurance costs have gone up so dramatically. Some employers are flat out telling their employees they will need to pay more money if they don't lose the weight. Other employers are taking a delicate approach and they are offering attractive cash incentives to the employees that can drop the weight.

In Indiana, one company actually charges their employees an extra $30 a paycheck for being overweight. Once they get to their recommended body mass index (BMI), they will not be charged the penalty. The employees must not only meet their recommended weight range, they must also meet cholesterol and blood pressure guidelines that have been laid-out by the company.

This is a great way to get your overweight employees to lose weight and get healthy. You do need to give them a window of time to get healthy before the initiative actually starts like a 12 month window. If you give your employees enough time to lose the weight and they don't lose the weight by the time the initiative starts, they deserve to pay the extra money.

Health insurance companies are also taking on the role of penalizing people that are overweight. United Healthcare is one company that has begun offering $1,000 to families that do not have anyone that smokes or is overweight. This means your old deductible of $5,000 is now $4,000.

Companies that have begun penalizing overweight employees have seen a 30 percent drop in healthcare claims. This is a big savings to companies that are looking for ways to cut the healthcare costs. So should you start penalizing your overweight employees? It is really up to you. Ask your managers how they would feel about it, especially since they deal with the employees on a daily basis and they may have to face some of the grumbling from upset employees.

If you think penalizing overweight employees is too extreme, you can try the other method of offering incentives to employees that are willing to lose weight. In order for the incentives to work, you need to offer something that is attractive to the employees. Cash incentives are always nice, but a lot of people prefer to get a day off work or extra vacation time.

Incentive programs also help to build the unity within a company because the employees are divided into teams. The team that is able to lose the most weight and meet their fitness goals will win the challenge and they will get the reward.

Make sure that your company is fair to everyone, even the employees that you deem unhealthy. A study done by Stanford University found that overweight employees are actually paid about $1.20 less per hour than non-obese employees. This is simply due to the perception that obese employees are lazy and are not as hard-working as other employees.