Companies are buying into wellness programs in a big way—especially financial wellness—and offering substantially larger financial incentives to employees and even their significant others to woo them into participating.
That's according to the eighth annual survey on corporate health and well-being from Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health, which finds that companies are increasingly realizing how financial wellness impacts employee's overall health and acting accordingly.
Not only are some 84% of companies now using financial security programs, such as access to debt management tools or student loan counseling, in their well-being strategies—up from 76% last year—but financial security programs are the third most popular offering, after physical well-being programs (95%) and emotional health programs (87%).
Employee incentives are also on the increase, with 74% of employers including them. Not only that, the average dollar amount of such incentives is up—to $742, from $651 in 2016 and $521 in 2013.
Employers are also boosting incentives for spouses and domestic partners; the average now for significant others is $694, a 47% increase over the 2016 average of $471.
But other incentives are on offer, too, with 67% of companies offering at least one; the two most popular are employee/group recognition and raffles.
All this rising interest in wellness is interesting, considering that 59% of respondent companies say they have not yet connected employee well-being to any key business metrics.
Still, they're boosting not just the programs they offer but also the breadth of such programs, with 73% of companies including community involvement in their well-being strategy (up from 65% last year) and 58% including social connectedness (up from 48% last year).
Employees are responding with greater participation in most areas, with the largest participation increase within the financial wellness area: 18%, compared with only 7% last year.
And employers intend to continue to use incentives to win employee engagement, with 43% saying they'll stay at the same level but 26% planning on expanding incentives at a greater level. Six percent, on the other hand, plan to cut back, due to lack of evidence of impact, the cost of programs or incentives and a lack of employee engagement, while 7% don't use incentives any longer and 19% say they don't know.
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