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Re: Health Fair at Work [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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ThisIsIt wrote:
Duffy wrote:
I've never understood this making a big deal out of privacy in regards to health. If I have some medical condition I really don't care who knows about it.

It's in large part because of the potential for employers to use that information to discriminate against employees or in hiring practices. So imagine in the scenario here that the OP was the supervisor of a department and was aware of which of his employees were tested that morning and unhappy with rising health insurance costs at his place of employment he decides he's going to get rid of all the unhealthy ones by giving them bad reviews, making their life hell, etc.

And yes there's nothing to stop anyone from talking about their own health woes or anyone else's as long as they didn't obtain that information in the role as a health care provider, then there is a problem.

LOL. I'm the Plant Manager :)

You don't need a health fair to figure out things like that. Just look around the production floor, monitor the smoking areas, and review sick call ins. It isn't rocket science.

"...the street finds its own uses for things"
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Re: Health Fair at Work [BCtriguy1] [ In reply to ]
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We have a similar program -- earn points for activity, points just for getting the metabolic screening done, more for being in each healthy category range, points for doing races with a sliding number of points based on distance, points for the completion of various quizzes, points for various "challenges" during the year, etc. There's a bronze, silver, gold, and platinum level, with wellness dollars being paid if you hit the silver level and the points can also be used for merchandise, gift cards, or charitable donations. I was at silver in Jan, gold in March, platinum in May, trying to double platinum by end of year now. As easy as it is to hit silver, I'm constantly amazed that managers need to send out reminder emails in mid-Oct through mid-Dec to make sure their employees hit the minimum threshold. It's a big chunk of cash for doing something quite minimal that I'd do anyway (work out, move my ass, get my health markers reviewed). The only real pain in the ass is uploading workouts, but it syncs with my Garmin account, which now syncs to my phone as soon as I'm done with a workout, so still pretty simple.

My wife's company also has a wellness program, but it's not as cushy as mine. It does, however, extend the metabolic screening to spouses with the same incentive as the employee receives, so I just got a $75 Amazon gift card out of that for 15 minutes of my time.


BCtriguy1 wrote:
timbasile wrote:
A friend of mine has an incentive at work where if you're using a fitbit to track steps you get a certain amount of money put in a health savings account. You can apparently skip the whole process by showing that you've done a 5k race in the past year.

"What about an Ironman?" He replies

"We'll have to look into that"

(He did get the credits in the end but he found the disconnect between the level of activity they're trying to incent vs what he was in fact doing already)

My wife had a similar incentive, but instead of money, you would earn points based on the number or steps you took in a day. The prize was a weekend getaway, and the more points you got, the higher chance you had at winning. My wife, who is a daily runner, and a nurse (on her feet all day) racked up more points then the highest half of other participants combined. We thought that was quite funny, and disturbing to see how little most people move around in a day. Of course, we didn't win the prize, some fat ass who only participated in the contest for a few days did.
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Re: Health Fair at Work [AutomaticJack] [ In reply to ]
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AutomaticJack wrote:
ThisIsIt wrote:
Duffy wrote:

I've never understood this making a big deal out of privacy in regards to health. If I have some medical condition I really don't care who knows about it.


It's in large part because of the potential for employers to use that information to discriminate against employees or in hiring practices. So imagine in the scenario here that the OP was the supervisor of a department and was aware of which of his employees were tested that morning and unhappy with rising health insurance costs at his place of employment he decides he's going to get rid of all the unhealthy ones by giving them bad reviews, making their life hell, etc.

And yes there's nothing to stop anyone from talking about their own health woes or anyone else's as long as they didn't obtain that information in the role as a health care provider, then there is a problem.


LOL. I'm the Plant Manager :)

You don't need a health fair to figure out things like that. Just look around the production floor, monitor the smoking areas, and review sick call ins. It isn't rocket science.

Sure for a lot of people that's true but on the other hand, lots of people have unhealthy cholesterol levels or hypertension and look perfectly healthy.
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Re: Health Fair at Work [MidwestRoadie] [ In reply to ]
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We have something similar but it's not all that great. I'm too lazy to bother entering the contests even though I do the stuff anyway. I just use the annual wellness screening to get my cholesterol numbers checked.
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