Helping Employees Cut Daily Costs with Gift Cards
U.S. workers are spending $5,620 a year on WHAT?
The answer might surprise some, but for many, it’s not a shock—coffee and lunch. According to one estimate, the average U.S. worker spends around $5,620 to $7,700 annually on these everyday expenses. If you’re thinking this seems high, consider the costs of your daily coffee run and lunch break. They add up fast.
Engaging the Activist Employee: Workplace Engagement & Corporate Social Responsibility
As the workforce continues to evolve, so do employee expectations for engagement and corporate responsibility. Today's "activist employee" isn’t just looking for a paycheck—they want to align with companies that reflect their values and take meaningful actions on social and environmental issues. Recent trends suggest that effective employee engagement is increasingly tied to how companies support causes that matter to their employees, creating opportunities for deeper connections between staff and the organization.
Medicaid & Medicare Health and Wellness Programs on the Rise
Most people in corporate America understand the benefits of health and wellness programs…from the potential insurance premium savings and government incentives to companies, to individual employee productivity increases, and long term behavior changes; health and wellness programs seem to be a win-win when you incent and motivate people to get involved. But, it’s not just the corporate side of America looking closely at health and wellness incentives. U.S. Medicaid and Medicare programs, States and insurance companies are also looking at incentives such as the
CVS Select gift cards. Such gift cards work as incentives in prevention programs that demonstrate changes in health risk and outcomes, such as tobacco cessation, controlling or reducing weight, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, and avoiding the onset of diabetes or improving the management of their diabetes condition.1 CVS Select gift cards is an example of a healthy gift card incentive that filters out unhealthy products, such as tobacco and alcohol, and supports positive purchases such as medication co-pays, over the counter medicines and other healthcare products. In many ways, the users of Medicaid and Medicare programs are some of the most vulnerable of our population, as they need prompting to get healthy and remain healthy, yet they often have fewer resources to do so.
Read more from CMS.gov to learn how incentives can benefit Medicare & Medicaid Services. Source: 1.
Overview of Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Program
6 Ways to Effectively Incentivize Safety
An effective safety rewards program can reduce injury and illness in an organization by 20-40%. Here are 6 ways to improve your safety reward program to ensure employees are being honest and using the safety reward program properly.
Can Smartphone Apps Help Maintain a Healthier Workplace?
People rely on their smartphones to ring alarms, retrieve all facets of communications, navigate where they’re going, and so much more! But what about navigating one of the most difficult challenges of life…changing behavior to improve one’s health? There is ZERO debate over the attractiveness and popularity of Smartphone, tablet, and computer apps to help us in our everyday life; but can they help change our behaviors, or keep our attention on our goals on a long-term basis? One of my first experiences with a healthy-app was more than 10 years ago, on my Palm Pilot with a program that tracked the foods I ate (down to the TBSP of milk in my latte). The program allowed me to input my daily exercise, and it would tally up my healthfulness for the day, week, month and adjust my workout accordingly to stay on track. I have to say, I was pretty good for a few years about tracking those crunches and treadmill walks to counter whatever food I ate.Although the technology became obsolete, the habits of how I make my coffee and the calorie & fat counting sticks with me to this day. Such apps could certainly be integrated into a workplace health and wellness program. Since tracking health and wellness milestones is an important cornerstone of any program, apps can be set up with individuals’ health and wellness goals to help employees track, in real- time, their own success…connecting them closer to their potential incentives or rewards, like the gift cards or premium reductions. With or without a health and wellness program, workplaces can promote such apps to keep healthy behaviors on track through the workday.
Check out this Quora discussion, to find some great ideas that you can pass on to your employees, coworkers, and teams. By supporting these technologies; you could help create a healthier workplace, one app/one person at a time.
