by Suzanne Glisch

The holidays are upon us. ‘Tis the season for family, merriment, and, my personal favorite, overindulgence. It is thus no wonder that after the holiday season ends, one of the top New Year’s resolutions is to get healthy. Although there are those few, valiant individuals who actually succeed in implementing and maintaining such a resolution, many people - myself included - lose the momentum to continue with it quite quickly. Over the past few years, however, employers have begun implementing health and wellness incentive programs, which can not only support employees’ personal health goals, but which can also significantly reduce the skyrocketing health care costs for the employer.

A wellness incentive program (“WIP”) encourages employees to adopt or maintain a healthy lifestyle in a number of ways - or at least take the first steps toward learning about healthy alternatives. For example, regular exercise can help reduce or eliminate a number of health problems, such as high cholesterol. And, the thought goes, healthier employees can also mean increased productivity, better attendance, and improved morale. Therefore, through a WIP, employers will offer a variety of incentives to employees who maintain or achieve health-related goals, such as maintaining a cholesterol level below a certain number or earning points through exercising.

While this type of program seems like a simple appealing way to help accomplish the goals of improving employee health while reducing business costs, employers need to be aware that the way they structure WIPs could run afoul of federal, state, and/or local laws. Indeed, WIPs should be crafted in such a way that they do not favor one group of employees and/or potentially discriminate against another group. To demonstrate, the following scenarios present a limited sampling of some of the issues that could arise in formulating a WIP:

• Avoid pushing employees to achieve unattainable goals;
• Include a variety of incentives and requirements that do not all revolve around physical goals, which could disproportionately affect certain protected groups of employees;
• Offer alternatives;
• Aim for participation, not performance;
• Focus on education;
• Be sure the WIP does not encourage conversations about employees’ personal medical conditions or violate employees’ legally mandated privacy rights with regard to health and medical information; and
• Keep things positive, rather than imposing consequences for not meeting WIP goals.