I’ve been hearing some pretty against-the-grain opinions on wellness lately and wanted to share them with you. For most of the last five years or so, the conventional wisdom on wellness programs is that health risk assessments and biometric screenings are the way to get the best data on employee health status, you have to juice participation by offering incentives and you have to be prepared to spend a pretty penny to get tangible results.
In just the last week, two professionals — one in the wellness industry, the other a benefits practitioner like yourselves — have told me the exact opposite: that starting wellness programs can be cheap, incentives are unnecessary and HRAs are flawed and in fact, can be dangerous for your wellness efforts.
