Employee Wellness Challenge Reward Strategies

10-minute read

First, let’s confirm the importance of workplace wellness programs and their role in encouraging healthy behaviors. These challenges are crucial to employee and employer well-being by promoting comprehensive initiatives for positive impact; examples: 

• Helping employees set and achieve wellness goals and maintain a healthier lifestyle with consistent habits

• Reducing healthcare costs, improving employee engagement, and augmenting the organization’s environment/reputation

• Fostering commitment, social interaction, and community (especially for remote employees)

• Focusing on varied well-being aspects — fitness, nutrition, mental health/emotional issues, personal finances, and more — to keep programs fresh and interesting for everyone

• Addressing related areas such as stress management and healthy sleep habits, meditating/mindfulness, gratitude, and digital detox

• Recognizing and raising the level of resilience in handling responsibilities along with work life balance

• Building a culture of workplace health

• Remaining inclusive by ensuring every employee has a way to participate and enjoy the results

• Creating a positive work environment and boosting morale

• Enhancing employee productivity and job satisfaction. 

Effective wellness programs are essential in gaining these numerous advantages for your organization and workers. 

The objective: Participants want to continue in your wellness activities because it makes them feel better in the moment while improving health and quality of life, long term. That’s why HES challenges are designed to work without the need for other rewards.

Read the research: https://hesonline.com/research/intrinsic-motivation/. 

But there’s no denying smart wellness incentives can drive interest and add to the fun — increasing registration as well as employee success while boosting participation and engagement. With that in mind, we outline the most effective incentive ideas — and point out a few approaches you may want to avoid.

In an ideal world, you’d have an unlimited incentive budget. Because you don’t, these strategies work well (sometimes better) when awarded randomly to a predetermined amount of participants rather than for everyone who meets the criteria.

Take Advantage of Every Reward Phase

Let each part of the program be an opportunity for encouraging employees while challenging them to stay engaged and motivated.

Signup

Registration rewards may attract some just looking for the carrot, with no (initial) intention of real participation. Reduce the risk by keeping the value small and branding it with your program name/logo. For example, if you’re promoting Colorful Choices, a branded shopping tote, which can be purchased in quantity for less than $2 each, accomplishes 3 things:

• Advertises the program when participants take it back to their work area for others to see

• Reminds them of the health goal when they use it while shopping for produce

• Becomes a subtle accountability nudge: I’ve got this thing, now I better follow through.

If your budget doesn’t allow everyone to receive a signup incentive, consider offering it to the first 50, 100, or whatever number you can afford. If you have multiple locations/departments, you may want to reward the first people to register from each.

Another effective technique is to tie signup incentive eligibility to a deadline earlier than the close of registration. For example, if you have a 3-week registration window, limit it to the first 2 weeks to create a sense of urgency and intensify signup momentum.

Team Formation

Similar to a signup incentive, a small reward for everyone who joins a team can raise registrations by 20% or more. Incorporating team-based challenges can further stimulate engagement and participation by encouraging employees to work together and fostering a sense of community. We consistently see greater success when participants are on a team and/or use a buddy feature (see below). Keep the same budget and timing considerations in mind as described above.

Buddy Recruitment

Each HES challenge has a buddy feature (called Friends, Sole Mates, Produce Pals, or other applicable terms) where participants can invite a colleague to join them. As with teams, buddies achieve the program goal at a higher rate than those who go it alone. Participants who engage with a buddy are more likely to complete the challenge and experience greater well-being gains, thanks to the added motivation, social connection, and accountability.

Weekly Thresholds

To reinforce consistency and add a little excitement, award incentives randomly each week for individuals/teams who achieve the threshold for points, steps, miles, nutrition choices, or whatever measure they’re tracking. These weekly rewards inspire participants to stay engaged and motivated as they work toward their goals. Remove previous winners from the pool and increase the number of prizes each week so people know the longer they stick with the challenge the greater their chance of winning.

Team Competition

Use a built-in leaderboard to award the top 3, 5, or 10 teams. If you have multiple locations/departments, consider team awards by category. The closer to home the prizes are awarded the greater the pull.

If the same teams are prone to win each competition, come up with an alternative to avoid discouraging others, for example draw winners at random from the top 5 teams. 

Completion/Goal Attainment

This may be the most important place to acknowledge achievement, particularly if the bar was set at a challenging height for most. The more personalized you can make the recognition the greater its impact. Consider an awards ceremony where each achiever receives a certificate and a pat on the back. If that isn’t practical, enlist your wellness committee or champions to hold brief local gatherings. Whenever practical, capture the moment in photos to share in program wrapups, newsletters, annual reports, and other communication materials.

As in team competitions, design reward criteria so everyone who reaches the program goal receives the award (or has an equal chance in a random drawing), not just those who score the highest.

Vary Wellness Incentive Types

Genuine recognition is more valued than stuff, so don’t feel a need to spend heavily for participants to feel good about their accomplishment. Aim to recognize achievers as soon as possible once the program ends.

Certificates

A few will get tossed, but many will be displayed proudly at workstations for months or even years. When possible, specify their contribution — such as being team leader — with a special line, symbol, or sticker. Encourage group photos with certificates to share on your HR or other site.

Novelty Items

Mugs, paper weights, bobble heads, squeeze balls, water bottles, and similar goods are affordable incentives; the more useful, the greater visibility they have. Set up a table in high-traffic areas and watch signups soar. Include a handful of promo cards along with the reward and ask registrants to pass them out to folks in their work area.

T-shirts and Other Wearables

Wellness managers tire of T-shirts before participants do, so don’t rule out this tried and true item. Mix it up with sweatshirts, vests, hoodies, packable rain jackets, flip flops, gym bags, backpacks, hydration packs, caps, socks, gloves/mittens, headbands, and visors — all are appreciated. Brand with the program logo for an ongoing reminder.

Swag

Quality merchandise can work if not overused in other areas. If everyone already has one, it will lose luster for your purpose. Come up with something unique that’s tied to your wellness program.

Gift Cards

There’s no beating the convenience and versatility of gift cards. To make the most of this option, be sure to include recipient personalization as well as a specific message about the achievement — Congratulations, Jane! We’re delighted to recognize your Walktober achievement with this $25 gift card. Keep walking… and we look forward to seeing you in our Worldwide Wellness challenge starting January 4. Electronic gift cards can be issued immediately upon achieving the goal. They’re convenient for international employers, saving time and eliminating storage or distribution headaches. (Check with your finance department about any income tax implications for recipients.)

Charitable Contributions

This can be a meaningful form of recognition, especially when employees are encouraged to support causes of their choice. In our experience it can work well once but is hard to replicate. If you specify the recipient, tie to the goal — a physical activity challenge fits well with donating to a local school for playground equipment, as an example.

Time Off

This is a high-value perk in most organizations, but may be difficult to pull off depending on work flexibility. It will require approval from HR and buy-in from supervisors, which could take months of planning. Gather informal data to see if this would be a welcome, practical idea for your workplace.

Credit Toward Annual Wellness Plan

If your organization has an ongoing wellness incentive plan, attaining an HES challenge goal can count toward the reward. Try not to make this the sole way to recognize participants, however. Aim for genuine, visible acknowledgment as close to the end of the program as possible.

Uh-Oh (What could possibly go wrong?)

Premium Discounts, HSA/HRA Contributions

Linking wellness achievements with health insurance premium discounts or contributions to savings or reimbursement accounts is fraught with peril. Some will appreciate the intention and understand the connection, but others can view it as holding their benefits hostage. In our experience this invites dishonesty and can lead to resentment. We always advise clients to keep healthcare benefits separate from wellness program participation.

Trips to Paris (and other too-rich schemes)

True story. An HES client once awarded the top team an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris despite our very clear warning this was not a good idea. As you would expect, the result was accusations of cheating all around and disappointment for 1000+ participants who didn’t win the trip (but 4 people were very happy). This is, obviously, a huge outlier. But any reward that’s too rich risks deception and hard feelings — and is sure to decrease future program participation.

Anything That Makes Participation Involuntary

Your employees have enough on their plates, with jobs plus responsibilities at home and in the community. Don’t make participation in your wellness program another thing they have to do. Everything about how you build, market, and implement your offerings should convey this fact: Our wellness program is another valuable, enjoyable part of your benefit package — a great advantage of working for this organization. 

You want them to participate because they want to.

Read more: https://hesonline.com/blog/engagement/decrease-intrinsic-motivation/.

Your Winning Idea

Have an incentive idea that’s worked well? Let your HES account manager know so we can share it with your wellness colleagues in a future blog posting. Here’s our incentive: Anything we post will be rewarded with fun HES swag.

Evaluating Program Success

Assessing wellness program success is critical to determining its effectiveness. Metrics, such as employee participation, feedback, and surveys, can provide valuable insights. Tracking progress toward wellness goals is also an important benchmark. Regular evaluation helps improve employee and organization health, ensuring both individual well-being and a healthier workplace overall.

Sustaining a Successful Program

The long-term success of your wellness program depends on ongoing commitment and adaptability. To keep it thriving, be sure to regularly evaluate effectiveness, gather feedback from employees, and make data-driven adjustments. Offering fresh well-being topics brightened with incentives helps motivate employees to maintain better health behaviors and stay engaged with wellness initiatives.

Support from the top for your program is also essential — having leaders actively champion and participate sends a strong message that employee wellness is a core value. Embedding wellness into the fabric of your organization creates a positive environment where employees feel supported in their health and well-being journeys. This sustained focus not only benefits individual employees but also drives organization success through improved morale, productivity, and retention.

Employee wellness programs are a vital investment in your population’s health and well-being, leading to improved productivity and job satisfaction. Effective workplace wellness programs require careful planning, clear goals, and a comprehensive approach that incorporates various wellness initiatives. Making well-being programs a priority can create a positive, healthy work environment that benefits employees and the organization.