Company Wellness : Workers Will Pay for Weight Loss Help.

Looking for incentives to get overweight staff to purchase into a health promotion program? A recent study  suggests many staff are even willing to pay much – or all – of the cost themselves.

Roughly 35 percent of firms with health promotion programs focus on providing workforce with convenient access to losing weight resources.

A poll of 1,352 staff members by the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent Obesity Alliance found that many people  would gladly chip in for the cost of the health promotion program when they believed it would help them lose weight. What staff members want –

• confidential support and counseling

• Access to a specialist nutritionist or personal trainer, and

• on-site exercise plans.

Until lately, only big businesses were able offer such wellness programs as part of their wellness benefits.   But the fastest growth of these wellness programs in the last two years has been in smaller firms (sometimes with as few as 50 full-time employees).

The majority of firms split the cost with staff members. Ordinarily, staff members pay up to about 25 percent of the cost. But some plans are fully worker paid.