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Winning with Wellness
May 09, 2007
This insurance company's wellness incentive motivated employees to walk 21,000 miles
By Leo Jakobson
As an insurance brokerage specializing in employee benefit programs, Northwestern Benefit Corporation of Georgia has an especially acute knowledge of the high cost to businesses of ill or injured employees. Research backs that up: A 2003 study by the HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis found that sedentary adults over the age of 50 who added 90 minutes of exercise a week to their routine cut an average of $2,000 from their annual medical bills.
While the Atlanta–based company does hope to see substantial savings by encouraging healthy behavioral changes in their 64 participating employees—26 of them considered sedentary—the program also is good for the employees.
To do that, the firm turned to Alison Earles, president and CEO of ACE Ideas, which runs a wellness technology company called HealthBux, and her partner, Chicago–based Hinda Incentives.
The first problem most companies have to overcome, Earles says, is that "the folks we really want to attract to healthy behavior are the sedentary ones who don't want to go to the gym" she says.
Instead her company uses a variety of techniques, starting with a points-based incentive program run by Hinda in which participants earn points (also called HealthBux) redeemable for awards by engaging in daily healthy behaviors.
To get everyone involved, Earles doesn't suggest gym programs, sports teams or marathons, except for those employees who already do that kind of workout, whom she calls champions. Instead, Earles tries to encourage employees to fit healthy behavior into their daily routine: using stairs instead of elevators, walking to or around a nearby mall, eating more fruits and vegetables. During the initial six-month program (another is in progress), which ran April to September 2006, employees walked more than 21,000 miles, walked nearly 11,000 flights of stairs and ate almost 2,400 servings of fruits and vegetables. The employees—including 11 of the 26 classified as sedentary—averaged three miles a day.
The key selling point, she says, is making these programs measurable. That's where the technology comes in. Earles gave employees pedometers that could upload data to a computer, and wands that could be swiped at electronic readers installed on building staircases and in stores on opposite ends of a nearby mall. A point-of-sale system in the company cafeteria kept track of fruit and vegetable purchases.
The measurement means "we are able to reinforce healthy behaviors," Earles says. "When [participants] climb a staircase, they hear a beep that lets them know they are getting closer to that outdoor grill they want.' It links awards to everyday, boring choices."
That data, automatically uploaded into the award system, lets participants track their progress. More importantly, it shows executives the investment is paying off. "Executives need numbers to make decisions," Earles says. "Once they can prove it's working, they can really put money into the program."
Hinda helps with program design, which is tailored to companies and to individuals. Companies with competitive employees—like sales forces—are often divided into teams, with sedentary workers' participation worth extra points. Individual challenges included climbing as many flights of stairs as are in the Sears Tower and walking the equivalent distance from Times Square in New York City to Massachusetts' Plymouth Rock.
HealthBux's online nature means it works for companies with multiple locations and dispersed sales forces. And Hinda can assign any dollar value to the generic HealthBux points.
Profile: Northwestern Benefit Corporation of Georgia
Industry: Insurance brokerage
Objective: Get employees, especially those who are over 50 years old and have sedentary lifestyles, to exercise more and eat better.
Strategy: A points-based wellness incentive program rewarded employees for walking and climbing stairs, electronically tracking progress to provide points for everyday activities and show concrete results.
Results: 64 employees walked 21,000 miles in six months, with nearly half of the over-50, sedentary employees averaging three miles a day. Together, they climbed the equivalent of the Sears Tower 783 times.
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