Promoting Small Business Workplace Wellness
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Mixed results from work associate incentives
There is an increasing trend among businesses to offer incentives to work associates for participation in workplace wellness program.
This raises two questions. The first is whether incentives increase work associate participation?
The second is whether work associate participation achieve lower health care costs?
The answer to the first question appears to be yes, incentives do increase work associate participation in workplace wellness programs.
A Rand survey found a 20% median program participation rate for employers who did not use incentives to encourage work associate participation in workplace wellness programs.
This compares to a 40 percent rate for employers that used rewards. Interestingly, there was a 73 percent participation rate among work associates where employers used penalties and/or rewards.
Do workplace health programs reduce costs?
There are conflicting answers to the question of whether workplace health programs reduce costs. There is evidence that it does. There is evidence that it does not.
The answers to the workplace health programs reduce costs question in part 2 of this two part series.
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