Using incentives to motivate employees to stay healthy

Smoking, obesity, and sedentary lifestyles are costing employers more than $12.7 billion a year in lost production costs, sick leave benefits, and healthcare expenses. When your employees move from healthy to unhealthy, they force the insurance company to move them into a high-risk pool. This pool includes higher health insurance premiums for their employers and higher deductibles for the employee.

To combat all the extra money companies are spending on unhealthy employees, they are using wellness programs to get their employees in shape and boost employee morale. Fifty to seventy percent of all diseases can be associated with lifestyle choices and are therefore preventable. If you are like most employers, you are looking for a way to motivate your employees to get healthy. Here are some tips that can help you get started:

• Offer health contests. Use the contest as a teaching opportunity to point out all the negative consequences of unhealthy living. Divide your staff into different teams and have them compete against one another to lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, or improve their health in some way.


• Offer financial incentives to get your employees to start taking care of themselves. Depending upon how big your company is, you should consider offering a generous amount (at least $500). If you are having the employees compete in teams, offer smaller incentive amounts (around $50).


• Provide partnerships with local health clubs. Many individuals say that the limiting factor for exercising is the cost of memberships to gyms or health classes. Businesses that can partner with such companies can provide memberships at discounts or even provide a free class for employees from time to time.


• Provide on-site exercise classes or programs. Some businesses have gone as far as providing their own company gymnasiums that employees and their family members can use during lunch, before and after work.


• Offer rewards for staying healthy. Try to discourage the use of sick leave by asking the employees only to use it when they are truly sick. If they follow this rule, let them know you will reward them with a financial incentive or another incentive at the end of the year. The stipulation is that if they come into work sick, you have the authority to send them home because you don't want the rest of the staff coming down with the illness.


• Reward healthy employees with extra time off. If your staff members can stay in shape and reduce the spread of office illnesses, you should reward them. Give them an extra day off for Christmas vacation or for Thanksgiving. This is a great incentive for your employees and you really don't lose a lot since most businesses don't do a lot of sales during the holiday rush (depending upon your business genre).

It may be a struggle for some of your employees to participate in the wellness program. Try to help them by making changes around the office. For example, if you have an employee that is trying to lose weight, reduce their temptation to snack by getting rid of the vending machines. This is a simple way to cut back on the amount of junk food they consume and to help them reach their fitness goals.

Encourage your smoking employees to quit by offering memberships to support groups. You may even organize your own support group using all of your smoking employees. They can all help and encourage each other as they battle the cravings and the temptation to smoke.

It is important to live a healthy lifestyle now because it will benefit you for the rest of your life. It is much easier to lose weight at 35 than 55 so you might as well work hard now so you can live a longer, healthier life!