How Can Incentives Promote Healthy Behaviors?

Seema Verma, the CMS Administrator, and Adam Boehler, the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, have been outspoken regarding the need to address proactively keeping people healthy, instead of waiting until they get sick and require expensive services.  In today’s healthcare world this is known as value-based care. 

In value-based care, providers are rewarded for the relative health of their patients, instead of getting paid to treat them when they are ill.  The management of chronic conditions is a key to lowering healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. 

What’s the Cost?

60% of all Americans have at least one chronic condition, and 40% have two or more.  These are the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care costs.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that that eliminating three risk factors – poor diet, inactivity, and smoking – would prevent: 80% of heart disease and stroke; 80% of type 2 diabetes; and, 40% of cancer.  While elimination might be unattainable to some, reduction of these is certainly a real goal.

The Need for Incentives

A survey of 2500 consumers conducted by Survata in association with HealthEdge in 2018, found that 53% of millennials want more incentives for healthy behaviors from their health plan.  It is well known in the award industry that properly designed wellness incentive programs can and will produce results.  When just the communications of the desire for a change in wellness habits doesn’t work, incentives have.  They can get employees off the couch, eating right, smoking less and enrolled and involved in the classes and programs offered to help them along the way  And they can keep them on the path.  Changing habits is hard, but motivation can help get it done.

A survey conducted by Incentive Research Foundation revealed that almost 59% of wellness programs contain gift cards as awards for certain objectives such as weight loss, exercise, smoking cessation, and enrolling and completing parts of the program.  An Aflac study found that 61% of employees agree that they have made healthier lifestyle choices because of these types of wellness activities. 

And among those incentives and programs for healthy behaviors, it has been proven that cash rewards do not have a sustained impact on life habits. Incentives such as gift cards for healthy habits make a long-lasting difference, helping to contain costs of healthcare, improve overall health outcomes and boost employee engagement.

What Wellness Awards Do Companies Use?

Incentives “Safety & Wellness IQ” survey, the top rewards in wellness programs are:

Award Type	Included in Program
Retail & Bank Gift Cards	58.9%
Merchandise	41.2%
Cash	27.9%
Insurance Premium Reduction	25.5%
Individual Travel	10.3%
Experiential Awards (Spa treatments, etc.)	7.4%
Group Travel	4.4%

It’s no surprise that gift cards are the number one award group as the vast majority of individual budgets for these types of achievable objectives are less $50 to $100 ea.  And gift cards are by far the best value in that denomination of award especially considering the high margins on merchandise that tends to deflate the value and group or individual travel awards that are quite expensive.  

Communications and Technology Are Key

Communicating the range and complexity of health services can present a challenge. Individual motivation or apathy, sensitive health issues, and the cultural, geographic and demographic differences in your organization can all pose problems that need to be addressed when deciding on the communication strategy. Intranet portals, email campaigns, mobile devices, well thought out promotional items and the use of a host of Technology apps that speak to fitness can all help to make your program a success. 

Activity trackers and wearable devises such as FitBit and smart watches are simple ways for employees to measure performance against goals.  The American Council on Exercise reports that “people are 30 to 40 percent more likely to be active just by wearing a fitness tracker.” By using gift cards redeemable for Amazon and other online suppliers you can help offset the cost of activity trackers that can be expensive. Two top apps that unlock this ability for iPhones and Android devices are Argus and Pacer, both free, as are a host of others..

Safety programs for years have used triggers to motivate intended behaviors to avoid accidents.  Wearables are a great trigger.  The device on your wrist, the blinking light and vibration are physical reminders to change your behavior. 

The Future

When you add financial planning, life style education, stress management and life-stage management to the equation, you move into the future from the wellness of the past to the entire well-being of the employee in the future.  With a wellness program designed to change every day habits and reinforce improvement, these holistic well-being programs can help improve business outcomes like productivity and employee engagement, essentially the health of the business. 

 

Companies that have seen measurable success know that these wellness programs take time to show results.  They are long term objectives with very positive long term consequences. 

There is abundant evidence to support the return on investment evident in the wellness programs of today.  A quick search of the net will provide many.  How is your wellness effort going? 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

What Do Companies Spend on Wellness & Safety Awards?

When considering an incentive effort to drive employee wellness and safety one of the first decisions to make is how much to spend on each employee. There has never been any definitive analytical proof that will show you how much it will take to motivate someone to change behavior, or for that matter what award will induce the most excitement.  For years the incentive industry has provided guidelines to help you decide: example: X% of the salary for the program period, but there has never been any empirical evidence to support these rules.  The chart below will give you a good idea of what type of budget companies are using today.

A number of factors go into motivating behavior change.  And while one is the award itself, it is by no means the only one.  If you think by simply offering some type $50-$100 fitness device you are going to motivate an employee to change years of poor lifestyle choices then think again, it probably won’t.  But in combination with the other pieces of the wellness program (not the least of which is well designed communications) a choice of awards can be effective.