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.