GiftCard Partners Blog

The scope of employee wellness has more or less stayed the same over the last five years since wellness programs have gained popularity. Employee wellness has always been focused on physical health, biometrics and insurance premium discounting.

Two new federal privacy rules for employer wellness programs were recently issued. The rules outline how employer-based wellness programs must handle the health information they request and receive from employees and their spouses. These rules come into place as growing concerns for employee privacy have been surrounding wellness programs.

According to a new poll of 617 full-time workers by
Flex+Strategy Group and Work+Life Fit, about half of all U.S. workers take part in some kind of wellness initiative, while about a third of all workers participate in some kind of employer-sponsored initiative. So if half of employees are doing some kind of exercise, and a third are doing it with work, what’s everyone else up to?

While the number of wellness programs continues to grow, we can’t help but wonder which incentives in corporate wellness are truly motivating employees to participate in programs and, most importantly, to stay well. There is still so much to learn about what works best in wellness and we are quickly learning that there is no one-size fits all motivator and motivation can be both
intrinsic and
extrinsic.