Are You Missing Out on These 'Wellness' Freebies?

A job with the Cleveland Clinic comes with some pretty nice perks. Among other things, employees of the Ohio-based medical and research center get to use fitness centers on the clinic’s campuses for free, and can take Weight Watchers and yoga classes at no cost. The reward for hitting the gym 10 times a month for 10 months? $100. Ditto for those who lose 10% of their weight.

The payoff sounds good – especially for the Clinic, which hopes to lower its expenses by pushing workers to get fit. And the tactic is increasingly popular with employers who are struggling to keep up with premiums for employees that have increased 115% over the last decade, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data. Indeed, more than half of employers expect to introduce a wellness program next year or expand on existing ones, and 34% will introduce or enhance financial incentives for those programs, according to Aon Consulting, an employee benefits consulting firm.

Yet the jury is out on the long-term effectiveness of these programs. Wellness initiatives may result in healthier workers, but they might also end up costing employers more than they’d save, says Louise Russell, a research professor at Rutgers University’s Institute for Health who has studied the cost-effectiveness of preventive health measures. “When you look at the fact that you have to treat many people for many years in order to prevent that one heart attack, you understand that costs add up and are more than savings,” Russell says.

What’s more, the literature on the use of financial incentives to motivate behavior change isn’t well developed yet, says Laura Linnan, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health who studies the use of incentives in modifying heath behavior. “Most are simple case studies, where a company has tried something – it might have worked for them, but it’s only a case of one. It’s not something you can generalize to all employers,” she says.

So, should employees sign up or not? If you’re unsure your company offers such a program, check with human resources or your insurer.

In a typical wellness program, employees take a health assessment, answering a broad range of questions about their nutrition, smoking, sleeping, stress levels, alcohol intake, as well as their family history with asthma, heart disease and diabetes.

The worker then gets a report and a health score showing where he or she is falling short, where there’s room for improvement, and how to reduce risk. The next step is the offer of access to an instructional program that would help them, say, stop smoking, manage stress or improve their diet.