Should employees be incentivised for leading healthy lifestyles?
The role of incentives has been a subject that UK employers have not embraced.
Evidence suggests that the inclusion of incentives alongside wellbeing programmes has not been prevalent in the UK, only 9% of employers recently surveyed actively offered these.
However, as employers face a challenge to increase employee engagement in health, perhaps incentives will start to have a place.
At the same time, is there a greater role for employers to focus on effective education and communication to encourage employees to buy into a culture of health and embark on a healthier lifestyle for their own peace of mind.
Align well-being to business strategy
It is important to consider why employers want to ensure a well-being strategy delivers results. Whilst we are seeing employers turn their attention to the preventative measures well-being presents, many employers focus on tactical changes, implementing programmes without any clear strategy.
However, we are seeing a change in tide and employers starting to recognise the need to develop a well-being strategy aligned to business issues such as low employee engagement, high health related benefit costs, high absence rates or low productivity levels.
Aligning strategy to business issues helps to build the business case and gain support from senior leadership. It enables clear measurement practices to be implemented. High engagement in programmes is key to their success and therefore action needs to be taken to encourage participation – so is this through incentives or education?
What is stopping employers from changing employee behaviour?
The Towers Watson Staying@Work survey 2013/4 told us that lack of budget was the primary barrier.
Perhaps senior leadership are not appreciating the benefits good employee well-being creates.
A lack of health engagement was the secondary barrier with a lack of evidence on returns being the third most prevalent barrier.
A lack of financial incentives was ranked in fifth place suggesting that employees are not seeking rewards for taking part or changing to a healthier lifestyle.
Link between healthy lifestyles and productivity
Turning to the Towers Watson Global Benefits Attitudes Survey 2013/14, our research of employee attitudes considered the links between health and worker effectiveness and if employees could identify these links.
When asked if employees who are in good health are more productive at work than those in poor health, 67% recognised this link, with 27% feeling unsure as to whether these links exist. However, when asked if employees who live a healthy lifestyle are more productive than those that do not, this figure reduced to 46%.
Clearly suggesting there is an opportunity for employers to educate employees more effectively on the effects of a healthy lifestyle.
We asked employees their views on employer involvement in helping them develop a healthier lifestyle. In particular, we asked if employers should take an active role in encouraging their employees to live a healthier lifestyle – 38% said yes.
However, when we considered how employees could help support employees through the introduction of information and initiatives, only 36% agreed with this role. Are employees telling us that they do not really understand how their employer can support them?
On the subject of incentives, 31% of employees were receptive to the use of rewards with 47% less sure of their role. With over two-thirds less sure of the role incentives play, is this telling us that there is not currently an appropriate mechanism to drive health engagement and that education plays a more effective role?
Our experience tells us that employers are not necessarily looking for high value cash awards but often discounts on leisure activities or wellness related items but for many it is the peace of mind that participation in programmes gives which drives engagement.
Our results enabled us to profile employees into three groups; those who are on-board, persuadable or resistant.
When you consider activities undertaken by each and whether they took part in activities offered by their employer or at a personal level, this gave us some good insights into behaviours and opportunities.
While a reasonable proportion of employees are taking part in activities at a personal level, employers may choose to focus on those who are not participating in any activity but who fall into the on-board or persuadable groups and are receptive to support from employers.
It is widely accepted that effective communication is key to driving health engagement.
Recognising the profiling of employee groups and targeting these groups can increase impact.
Applying behavioural economics techniques to establish employee values, motivational drivers, decision making factors ensure an impactful approach.
Recognising the use of modern media such as social media and gaming helps to raise awareness in an ever-changing world.
Quite simply, if telling people what they needed to do was enough we would all be healthy. Employers have a role to create a culture of health in the workplace.
Our research suggests there is potentially a place for incentives however; employees are not looking for the high cost rewards prevalent in a US market driven by high healthcare costs. Instead employees may be equally driven by an effective and impactful education programme and one which encourages employees to buy into health and embark on a lifestyle change without the need for any incentives. What is clear is that health engagement needs to be encouraged and employers hold the key to achieving this.
As employers face this challenge of increasing employee engagement in health, perhaps incentives will start to have a place.
At the same time, is there a greater chance for employers to focus on effective education and communication to encourage employees to buy into a culture of health and embark on healthy lifestyles for their own peace of mind?
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This article was supplied by Towers Watson.
In partnership with WTW
WTW is a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company.
