Incentives for Employees to Meet Benchmarks for Wellness

Ensuring employees meet benchmarks for wellness is an important part of building an employee wellness initiative. By creating a strategic plan of action for your organization, you can provide a framework that is tailored to help your employees reach wellness goals. Organizations that are dedicated to the wellness of employees thrive because their employees are healthy, motivated and more productive. Building a healthy culture within an organization involves physical characteristics of the workplace, such as noise, lighting, air quality, and an ergonomically adapted workspace. A healthy work environment also includes healthy eating options, regular breaks and opportunities for exercise. When you offer employees a healthy office environment and other incentives, they are more likely to participate in wellness initiatives such as biometric screenings and health assessments.

What is Office Ergonomics?

Another contributing factor to workplace wellness and incentivizing employees to participate in wellness initiatives is office ergonomics. Ergonomics is the study of creating a workspace that benefits employee’s needs and aims to increase efficiency and productivity and reduce discomfort. It focuses on how employees are positioned while interacting with their office environment. If they don’t use ergonomic concepts while working, it can result in injury, which can cost an organization a large amount of money and productivity. Therefore, it’s important to provide employees with the proper desk setup, regular breaks and limited exposure to digital screens as they all contribute to potential pain, injury or lack of productivity.

Simple ways to promote office ergonomics within your organization and incentivize employees to be healthier is to offer an updated office setup with furniture, such as standing desks, supportive chairs and computer monitor stands. These office essentials encourage mobility, proper posture and alignment. Also, enforcing a regular break pattern will maintain productivity and contribute to physical well-being as employees can move around and decompress from constant interaction with digital screens, which can cause digital eye strain. Digital eye strain is a result from too much exposure to blue light that is emitted from digital screens, it can cause blurred vision, dry eyes, fatigue and headaches. An organization can practice computer and cognitive ergonomics by recommending employees use the Night Shift function on their computers, which lowers blue light emissions or by purchasing blue light glasses for employees, which filter out blue light emissions.

What is a Biometric Screening?

According to The 2014 Willis Health and Productivity Survey Report, 74 percent of employers offer biometric screenings as a part of their wellness initiatives. The CDC defines a biometric screening as “the measurement of physical characteristics such as height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood glucose and aerobic fitness tests that can be taken at the worksite and used as part of a workplace health assessment to benchmark and evaluate changes in employee health status over time.” The screenings are very similar to a physical as it’s used to measure your overall well-being and make you aware of any health complications that could threaten you in the future such as heart disease, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Although the screenings are precise and conveniently given at your office, they shouldn’t replace your annual visit to your healthcare provider. 

What is a Health Assessments? 

According to the CDC, a workplace health assessment is a way to:

●     Gather information about the health of employees and ways to improve it

●     Increase productivity and control health care costs within an organization

A health assessment determines factors that influence workplace health such as an employees personal health practice, an employee's relationship with upper management and coworkers, workplace culture, benefits and initiatives and office environment.

The required resources needed to conduct a health assessment and gain information about an organization and its employees include on-site visits, employee surveys, health benefits and healthcare claims. A health assessment is considered a necessary first move before taking any other action because an organization needs to be aware of the health of its employees before it can develop a strategy.

Why your Organization Should Provide Biometric Screenings,  Health Assessments and Office Ergonomics

Office ergonomics, biometric health screenings, health assessments help to create a blueprint for an organization's health and wellness strategy and initiatives. They can be considered a first step toward a healthier office environment, culture, staff and contribute to lowering the cost of healthcare plans as they provide an accurate representation and contribute to the overall health status of an organization.

Employer Benefits

These assessments are able to provide employers with detailed information and insight that can mold the ideas and practices of their health and wellness initiatives to their organization perfectly. The organization will also benefit from a lower cost healthcare plan as it pinpoints potential medical complications of employees and likely prevents them from progressing. 

Employee Benefits

These screenings, assessments and proper ergonomics may make employees aware of health risks, conditions and complications they may have, as well as those that could potentially develop or be prevented. Digital eye strain, heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, to name a few, can be prevented or combatted with a few ergonomic and lifestyle changes, however, signs and symptoms often go unnoticed before risk factors develop. This is how employees benefit from on-site screenings and assessments. It’s a simple, convenient and quick way to determine what you’re at risk of and how you and your organization can adjust wellness initiatives to improve conditions and prevent further development.

How to Incentivize Employees to Participate in Wellness Initiatives

An employee health and wellness initiative is useless if employees don’t participate in activities that drive the initiative’s purpose. As a result, it’s important that your organization approaches the wellness initiative in a strategic and not overly authoritative way. You want employees to be interested in bettering themselves and their workplace but you won’t spark that kind of interest through forceful methods as you cannot require employees to participate in these assessments.

Employers can increase participation in health and wellness screenings and assessments by offering incentives to draw employees in. This will help employers get a better understanding of the health risks within their organization and influence employees to be more aware of their physical and mental state. An organization can incentivize employees in a variety of ways, but programs should be specific to the organization and employee structure, with a focus on the health and wellness theme. To optimize this approach, the organization needs to have a good understanding of their employee base and what motivates them.

Potential incentives include:

●      Cash/Gift Cards

●      Extra PTO

●      Raffles

●      Prizes (e.g., Speaker, iPhone, Headphones)

●      Healthcare Discounts (e.g., Lower Deductibles)

●      Organization Sponsored Gym/Athletic Club Memberships

●      Workspace Additions (e.g., Ping Pong Table)

●      Free Breakfast or Lunch Once a Week or Bi-weekly

●      Company Trip (e.g., Ski Trip)

●      Flexible Work Hours

In order to truly incentivize your employees, it’s important they understand the benefits of participating as well as the benefits offered by the organization, and with initiatives that are specific to your organization, location, employees and wellness values.