Employers see incentives and disincentives as a great way to get workers to participate in wellness programs. Yet single-mindedness on participation may cause employers to overlook the true objective of wellness, which is to improve health, reports the Integrated Benefits Institute.

The nonprofit organization studied health-related incentives and disincentives offered by 500 employers. Overall, nearly 75% of respondents offer at least one incentive aimed at promoting health and wellness.

Seventy-seven percent of employers, however, said the main goal for incentives and disincentives is to encourage participation, while about two-thirds said their incentives and disincentives focus on changing behavior to improve health and productivity.

"Our research indicates that employers often aren't strategic in con­necting the incentives and the disincentives they use with their own views about which ones are most effective," says Thomas Parry, president of IBI. "Rather than focus on improved health-related outcomes, which is far more important to an employer's bottom line, the most frequent program goal often is limited to encouraging employee participation in health and productivity programs."

Other key findings from the IBI research report Employer Incentives for Workforce Health and Productivity include:

▪ Only 19% of respondents use disincentives. Employers use cash-based and benefits-related strategies most frequently. Prizes and gifts are less common, while salary and job disincentives are only used by a few.

▪ Corporate culture is a significant determinant of employer behavior. Many employers are in the early stages of implementing these programs, however, and the results point to the need for better communication and corporate reinforcement of the importance of health to both the employee and corporate bottom lines.

▪ Substantial sums are invested in incentives and disincentives, with about 50% of respondents investing more than $200 per participant, per year and more than one in five valuing them at more than $400 per participant per year. More than 40% said they would increase the dollar value of their incentives.

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