If you work for a big enough employer, it's likely that you've been urged to participate in the company's wellness program. It could be an educational seminar or an office-wide weight loss competition, something that incentivizes healthier lifestyle choices. The idea is healthy employees increase productivity and save a company money.
But some studies say that many of these wellness programs and incentives don’t necessarily deliver, and in fact, may actually shift more costs to employees who need wellness programs the most. Corporate wellness expert, Andrew Sykes, says one of the big problems with these programs is they rely on extrinsic motivation or "cash-like" rewards.
"Although they do work to get you to do things once or twice like completing your biometric screening, generally they're not the best tools to have you adopt a habit in the long term," says Sykes. "In fact, sometimes extrinsic sources of motivation undermine the intrinsic motivator."
"The last 30 years has been a story largely of how wellness has failed in this country."
Sykes is the self-described "President and Chief Habit Starter" for a Chicago-based consulting firm, called Habits at Work. He believes the concept of wellness programs is a good one, but says that most organizations aren't using practical tactics to encourage their employees to be healthier.
"The last 30 years has been a story largely of how wellness has failed in this country and we don't think that's because being healthy in itself is the wrong thing to do. We just think we've gone about getting people to practice these healthy habits in the wrong ways," he says. "We do that based on a lot of assumptions that turn out to be true."
Assumptions like believing that employees will change their lifestyles if they're informed about the dangers they pose. "Most people know to not smoke, to exercise, to eat healthily and it just doesn't make the difference," says Sykes.
"Most people know to not smoke, to exercise, to eat healthily and it just doesn't make the difference."
Still, Sykes believes there is some middle ground that can be easily reached, which would help both companies and their employees. The best way to do that is for a company to fundamentally change the way they approach their wellness program, by changing their motivation.
"We have a saying in our company which is: If you invest in wellness in order to reduce healthcare costs, you'll probably fail to meet your goals," he says. "But if you invest in wellness as a way to drive high employee engagement, high performance at work, to build a strong relationship with these employees so that you attract, retain, and motivate the best talent, you'll almost certainly achieve those goals. And as a bonus, you'll expect to see healthcare costs come down."
