Making Healthy Choices™

Good Incentives Increase Participation in Wellness Program

A low participation rate in corporate wellness programs is one of the major reasons organizations fail to get healthcare costs to drop. Companies successful in reducing costs usually have 80% or more of their employees and families actively involved. One great way to get more people to participate is to build effective incentives into your program structure.

The types of incentives, amounts, and the uses of incentives vary. If you do not have a lot of extra funds to spend on employee incentives, you’ll want to determine how best to spend your limited dollars.

Most importantly, you want to motivate people to take the Health Risk Appraisal (HRA). Without an incentive, you can expect about 10-15% participation – and these are generally the healthiest people. You want to encourage the other 85-90% who wouldn’t normally take the HRA to participate. With the right incentive, you’re more likely to get those with health risks and health conditions or diseases on board.

Once at-risk people are identified through the HRA, you can begin interventions to reduce risks and decrease potential future healthcare costs. You should determine what you hope to accomplish through incentives, and design an incentive structure that will help you accomplish those goals. When you select wellness incentives that are viewed as meaningful by employees, your organization will experience greater participation and healthier employees – resulting in decreased absenteeism and increased productivity.

Health Benefit Incentives
Benefits-linked incentives are most effective in increasing participation. A few examples of successful benefits strategies follow:

• Employees receive a discount of up to $20 per pay period on their health insurance premiums for participating in your wellness program.
• Participating employees are enrolled in a health plan that provides more coverage or expanded services.
• Employers make a contribution to an employee’s flexible spending account (FSA/section 125) account for participating in various wellness program activities. For example, a participating employee might receive $50 for the assessment, $20 for a health screening, and $20 for enrolling in an intervention.

Game Cards
Programs that reward often for a variety of activities are bound to be successful. Wellness program game cards are great incentives for just this reason. Simply distribute game cards to employees when they’ve met specific wellness goals, safety goals, and more. The Wellsource game card incentive program allows participants to accumulate points over time for high quality gifts of their choosing, as well as a cash prize drawing component. The advantages for using game cards are as follows:

• Cards are inexpensive, allowing employers to distribute cards often and for a variety of different wellness activities.
• When cards are distributed often, employee enthusiasm and excitement for your program is maintained over time, keeping employees motivated.
• The Wellsource game card program is the easiest type of incentive program to administer.
• The two-tiered component of the game card system (point accumulation and quarterly/annual cash drawings) makes the program appealing to participants.

Monetary Incentives and Gift Cards
Monetary incentives and gift cards can be very effective for increasing participation – depending on the dollar amount. Although a $10 incentive may inspire some people to participate, studies show that in order to reach high participation levels, employers need to commit at least $100 to each participant who completes the HRA. This likely means you’ll only be able to award for a select few activities with your wellness program. Other disadvantages for using monetary incentives and gift cards include:

• Cash is often viewed as compensation rather than an incentive.
• Cash and gift cards disappear rapidly and are easily forgotten.
• Gift cards involve service fees over and above the cash value of the card – the higher the dollar amount of the card, the higher the service fee.
• Once a retailer is selected for the gift card, the participant can only redeem the gift card toward that retailer, allowing less flexibility for the participant.

Non-Monetary Incentives
Incentives such as t-shirts, mugs, water bottles, gym bags, etc. can be fun and useful in certain scenarios. However, they are not the most effective way to motivate someone to take an HRA. Save them as mementos for activities such as fun runs, bicycle events, and other wellness related programs.

Survey Your Population
Before deciding what incentives to offer, survey your population about the type of incentives that would motivate them.

• Some incentives motivate more people to participate than others.
• Certain types of incentives keep people involved in wellness programs longer than others.

Give employees a list of possible incentives, and ask them to rank each using a scale from 1 (least motivational) to 5 (most motivational). Be sure to leave a suggestion blank for employees to fill in themselves. There is no greater resource than your own employees when looking for incentives that are effective.

The Last Word
Although incentives are a key to participation, it’s also important that people know why they should participate in your wellness program. Avoid focusing on incentives alone. Rather, be sure to focus on the benefits they will receive by being a part of the program, such as:

• Free health screening
• Information about their health, and how to improve it
• Assistance in making positive health changes (coaching)
• A medical self-care guide
• Free health newsletter
• Other motivating tools you offer through your wellness program