Beyond Workplace Wellness

As Ron Leiber points out in his New Year's Day article Incentivize Yourself to Good Health in 2011, the power of financial rewards has come to corporate America. 

Two things have happened recently that will probably bring more incentives to more people. First, the new health care law explicitly grants permission to employers to offer rewards of at least 30 percent of the total cost of health insurance to employees. Those winnings, often in the form of lower premiums, will go to people who join wellness programs and hit certain health goals.

Right now companies are experimenting with new ways of leveraging financial incentives to improve the health of their employees because of the real bottom line benefits.  In a recent meeting with one of the wellness incentives thought leaders, Ken Shachmut at Safeway Health, he mentioned to me that he is taking a broad approach and looking for new arrows to add to his quiver to help his employees improve their chance of success and enable them to reach their wellness targets. My recommendation was to look beyond the enterprise, to the real social network that surrounds their employees and figure out how to get them engaged. In short, try the HealthRally approach. He liked it.