HealthyWage is a weight-loss initiative with an interesting twist — participants have bet their own money and stand to gain considerable payouts for losing more than other teams. That “skin in the game,” company officials say, is significantly more of a motivator than the traditional incentives that employers offer with weight-loss programs. The wagered risk (and competitive nature) of betting on your own diet and exercise is seeing marked success, they report.
Jimmy Flemming, a HealthyWage cofounder, says all of its programs “are well-suited to the workplace because that’s what they’ve been optimized for.” After years of tailoring to the requests of benefits managers’, the company counts “just about 500 corporate and government clients, including not-quite-50 of the Fortune 500” as users of its unusual service.
