For years, employers have been trying to get workers on the healthy bandwagon. But you guys haven’t been cooperating.
You’re still smoking. You’re still sitting on the couch and eating Yodels. And as a result, managers are taking out the big guns.
If you’ve gotten incentives from your company just for signing up for a wellness program or for taking a health assessment, expect it to get harder to pocket such financial inducements, according to a survey by Towers Watson, a global professional services company, and business organization, the National Business Group on Health.
Smokers actually have to stop smoking. Overweight and obese workers actually have to start shedding pounds.
“Employers are frustrated by their employees’ low use of expensive health improvement programs,” said Ted Nussbaum, senior consultant at Towers Watson. “As employers continue to empower workers to be more health focused, they are beginning to target and reward those workers who demonstrate a real commitment to making positive lifestyle changes.”
The survey found:
* 53 percent of large employers offer financial incentives to workers who enroll in health engagement activities, such as weight management or smoking cessation programs. But, for many employers, participation alone is no longer enough to earn an incentive.
* Now, more than one-third of employers (37%) reward only those workers who meet the company’s requirements for completion of a health engagement activity, and almost one-third (29%) only reward members who participate in multiple activities.
* Still, most employers (93%) have no plans to eliminate their health promotion programs, and 83% have no plans to cancel or delay adding new ones.
The idea of offering incentives to employees in the first place has always struck me as an actual penalty against workers managers consider to be unhealthy. Indeed, employers walk a fine legal line when crafting such programs.
But for the most part, the government gave companies the green light on this in 2007.
One caveat: If you feel you’re being singled out for unhealthiness, but you have an underlying illness or disability that may be contributing to your weight gain, or high blood pressure, etc., you may have some protections under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
For the rest of us, however, we all may have to live with these types of intrusive programs whether we like it or not. And they are going to get even more intense in the years ahead.
“Employers and their workers face a challenging road ahead together,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. “Those companies most effective at empowering their workers to be engaged consumers of care will find greater success at keeping costs low and likely be rewarded with a healthier, more productive workforce — an effort that has never been more important than it is right now.”
(And by the way, Yodels are a cylindrical, chocolate cake and cream treat I grew up eating.)
Fat guy on a treadmill illustration credit: Duane Hoffmann / msnbc.com
March 12th, 2010 at 9:35 am
What’s a Yodel? Sure, I could google it, but I’m bound to get more vivid decriptions here.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:52 am
I think Yodels may be a Northeast thing. I always got a two-pack in my Partridge Family lunch box. Sometimes I would freeze them. Ahhh, chocolate goodness.
What do you have in your neck of the woods HikingStick, HoHos?
March 12th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
HoHos are common. Once upon a time, there were Zingers. I never liked them, but the commercials were always on Sunday evenings around the time of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and Wonderful World of Disney.
I know that my father’s favorite cany bar, Chunky, is unknown where I now live. When we vacationed in Canada, we discovered Coffee Crisp candy bars, and those became an instant favorite. We only got them once a year, though.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I don’t believe this BS!
If I were an employer I would not care whether my employees were fat or not. What I care about is output. Performance. Effectiveness. Who cares if one of your colleagues can’t climb the stairs to the office? What do we have the elevator for?
Of course there are exceptions: I would not crowd my footlocker Store with fat boys ‘n gurls. Neither a hotel-spa. But what about your favorite diner? If the cook is too thin his food probably sucks so bad that he doesn’t even eat it himself. Or imagine your Bear’s&Friends dealer would frown at you like “how can you eat this junk” while handing you your $20 purchase!
As I showed in the examples, there are jobs where your personal size does matter. But: the vast majority of the jobs are absolutely independent of the person’s weight. Even independent of the smoking habits — as long as the office performance is top. Contrary to this I think that drugs or alcohol abuse will always be a penalty on performance and thus should be treated mercilessly — after a warning.
Sweets and burgers should NOT be put in the same category as drugs and alcohol!
March 12th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
You make a good point Gin Tonyx. It should all be about performance. But alas, it’s not.
Many businesses are worried about their escalating health care insurance costs and that’s what’s driving much of this.
As for drugs, many employers do screen for that before they hire you. As for gin tonics at lunch, so far, few employers are trying to derail that.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Health care costs are definitely an issue. The health (including weight) of participants in a group health plan has a direct impact on the costs associated with the plan (due to increased payouts, or the statistical likelihood of increased payouts). Whereas employees with specific medical diagnoses would have some protections under the ADA, being generally overweight or unhealthy does not carry such protections.
March 13th, 2010 at 6:52 am
I get the point “health insurance”. Although I still have a problem with it. The fair thing would be to have all health risks taken into account, not only obesity. You would have to consider Skateboarding, Bungee Jumping, Mountain Biking, Motorcycling, any kind of Motorsports, all Ballgames, Hunting, all addictive Computer Games, Gambling, Poker, YouTube… just everything that gets your heartrate “too far” up or down. There are enough people having a heart attack while playing chess.
So my point is: it’s not fair to take only a few health risks. You have to consider everything. And then it becomes irrelevant what you do in your time off.
On a personal note on the lighter side: I don’t drink before 5 o’clock. “Somewhere must be 5 o’clock!” (Saying from the the colonial age where the British Empire spanned almost around the world).
Seriously: my Screen Name is only a Reference to Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I don’t drink more than I can take.
March 13th, 2010 at 9:55 am
no. eva, it’s not so they can get wealthy. it’s so u don’t die. obesity and associated heart disease/failure is the, be very very very clear about this, the number one killer in any category, under any circumstances. insurance companies DO NOT want to pay out for your lifestyle choices. neither do financially aware consumers.
health insurance is a misnomer. it’s sickness insurance. eating well, even moderate exercise (take a walk in the mall), drinking plenty of water is, in this country, free. obesity is a sickness and is bet against in the actuarial algorithms.
frankly if it were for corporate incentives to get people healthy, some people are shaving 10-15 years off their lives. i bet you are going to posit that greedy corporations force feed their employees big sized fries and whoppers and chicken wings and paddock us into a soft cushy chair as we suck down media like this form the idiot box?
March 13th, 2010 at 11:50 am
It’s a great thing to encourage workers to be healthier. My concern is that employers not take things like this too far in the name of profit.
That’s what I’m doing here Matt. Calling attention to these issues and hoping it sparks a dialogue.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:39 am
Of all people I know, one individual is a great example of an employer taking the healthy lifestyle way too far and this is disturbing to me. He worked as a guard in our county jail. He had been there over ten years. He had the intelligence and the commitment to maintaining a resemblance of good physical attributes and became a Shift Supervisor. He was slightly over weight and he did smoke cigarettes. When they banned inmates form smoking or using any tobacco over ten years ago, he said it most assuredly created huge problems. In fact, the no choice but quit inmates were actually harder to deal with than many inmates who were now former drug addicts. The County provided smoking cessation and some limited prescriptions to inmates to help them cope with this, but the guards health plan had restrictions and limitations on this course of therapy. Of course the guards found ways and secret places to have a smoke. Some prisoners went as far as making accusations of guards who did this and the guards were sometimes disciplined. The solution was to allow the guards access to the very successful inmate program and it produced non smoking guards and also better relationships with the guards and the prison population. This job is stressful enough so any means to make it less stressful was considered very positive.
Well, during the negotiations of a new labor agreement, it was regarded as being counterproductive by our elected officials for guards to have any contact with inmates outside of disciplinary or simply escorting prisoners. The conclusion was that there should be no other dialog. The health provider’s rates would increase almost 30% to allow the on going therapy that the inmates received along with the guards. According to my friend, few people will admit that it is an addiction and you will light up again. You often some support to maintain periodically. although there were other issues, the guards eventually took less pay raises to counter the increase in health care. After the contract took effect, the program the prisoner’s used effectively was discontinued and it was noticeable how much more difficult the prison became, according to my friend. However, a year or so after the contract, the guards faced a new challenge regarding their body fat index. They actually instituted disciplinary actions to guards who did not fall inot the BFI limits they had made.
My buddy became a police officer in a mid-sized community. He is back to smoking, he is still a little larger proportionately. He is also very happy that he works in an adjoining county because he says the people who go in to our county jail come out much worse, and that included the guards.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
We’re not all born physically equal.
Some folks are naturally so skinny, they get accused of eating disorders. Some folks have thick hips and thighs, but thin waistlines. Some folks get a beer gut without drinking beer. Some are born short, others tall. Some are blonde, some are redhead. Some are black, some are brown. Some are D cup, others A. Some have a flat butt, others have a round rump.
Some of these things you can change outright. Others you can influence to a fair degree. Others, it’s a sisyphusian challenge to effect any meaningful difference.
The author seems to think “fatties” (the derogatory label thrown out on her twitter) are nothing more than lazy gits shoveling yodels in their collective pie holes. Clearly, that would be a very ignorant position to hold when there’s a great variety of causes for being overweight. Some causal factors are behavioral, some are not. It’s too bad anyone lumps “fatties” together in order to paint them in false light as being nothing more than lazy overeaters.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Sorry my use of the word “fatties” bothered you. In hindsight it wasn’t the best choice. I was trying to show how some employers have disregarded the privacy of employees. And picked that word to convey how punitive some programs have become. Seems the word made it look like I was the one who was punitive.
Thanks for pointing that out ReaderX.