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Biggest losers win in boardrooms too |
ATLANTA: How much money would it take
to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?
Many employers
are betting they can find your price. At least a third of US companies offer
financial incentives, or are planning to introduce them, to get their employees
to lose weight or get healthier in other ways.
“There’s
been an explosion of interest in this,” said Kevin Volpp, director of the
University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives. Take
OhioHealth, a hospital chain whose workforce is mostly overweight. The company
last year embarked on a program that paid employees to wear pedometers and get
paid for walking. The more they walk, the more they win — up to $500 a
year.
Anecdotal success stories are everywhere. Half of the 9,000
employees at the chain’s five main hospitals signed up, more than $377,000
in rewards have already been paid out, and many workers tell of weight loss and
a sudden need for slimmer clothes. But does will this kind of effort really put
a permanent dent in American’s seemingly intractable obesity problem? Not
likely.
Only about 15 to 20 US studies have tried to evaluate the
effect of financial incentives on weight loss. Most of those studies were small
and didn’t look at whether such measures worked beyond a few months. None
could make conclusions about how much money it takes to make a lasting
difference for most people.
Companies tend to be more interested in
incentives than disincentives like taxes. But the perks they attach to wellness
programs come in a variety of forms and sizes.
Some reward employees
just for having a health evaluation or simply enrolling in a class —
whether they complete it or not. Others require measurable weight loss or
exercise achievement, sometimes structuring it in a contest along the lines of
‘The Biggest Loser’ TV show.
Some companies offer money,
some vacation trips. Some refund the cost of Weight Watchers classes. Others
reduce health insurance premiums. The value of rewards can range from measly to
thousands of dollars. Hunches and human resources budgets — not research
— often drive decisions about financial incentive details. Companies are
quite frank about it.
IBM rewards employees for doing 12-week
web-based health programs. They offer $150 per program completed because there
was a feeling that was the right amount to get people involved, said Joyce
Young, the company’s wellbeing director.
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