Institute For The Future

Nudging employees to wellness is a hot topic

 

 

Brad and I have both blogged recently about companies that provide employers with reward-based wellness programs (here and here).  Thank goodness PR people troll the web looking for stories about their competitors, otherwise we might never have learned about Tangerine:

 

 

 

 

 

You may want to see how the future already is regarding paying employees to lose weight. Check out Tangerine Wellness, www.tangerinewellness.com. They've been doing this for companies for about five years already and saving them on average 10 percent of health care costs year over year.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not going to go into the details of Tangerine's program, but I will share with you a couple of media resources I found on the company's site. First is this August 5, 2009, Forbes article entitled, "Use Bribes to Stay Healthy: Can companies save money by paying employees to lose weight or quit smoking." This trend is growing fast. According to one source, "80% of big companies now offer financial incentives for participating in wellness programs, up from 40% three years ago."

 

 

 

 

Forbes offers neuroeconomist George Loewenstein's explanation for why immediate payoffs can be particularly motivating: "The prospect of a fast payout activates the brain's limbic system, involved in emotion and reward, brain scanning studies have found; payoffs far in the future mainly stimulate areas involved in rational thought."

 

 

 

 

You may also find interesting this recent CNBC interview with Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Delos Cosgrove about the high cost of obesity and ways of creating incentives—and disincentives—for people to lose weight.