Precept Employee Benefits Blog

Typically, when a company becomes serious about implementing a wellness strategy, one of the first tactics deployed is a promise of reward-based incentives.  It is not uncommon for an employer to dangle a gift card or some sort of merchandise in front of their employees in exchange for kicking a smoking habit or reaching a desirably healthy weight.  It is unusual, however, for companies to threaten financial punishment for people who do not achieve these health-based goals.  But that is what the Indianapolis-based company Clarian Health is planning on doing starting in 2009.

Clarian’s program to get employees invested in wellness, part of what they have dubbed their “Call to Change” mission strategy, is mandatory for anyone who enrolls in their company’s health plan.  All participating employees that use tobacco, are overweight, have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or high glucose will have to pay fines up to $25 each pay period they are not in compliance with Clarian’s guidelines.

As important as wellness programs are for the health of the workforce (and the long-term bottom line for the company), this radical approach to improving health goes overboard, simply because it is lacking in the one crucial element that a successful wellness program needs to have as its firm cornerstone:  care.  In fact, from an employee standpoint, the plan could be easily viewed as cold fear mongering put forth by an impersonal entity that is finding ways to micro-manage beyond their cubicles.  It also would not be too much of a stretch to imagine that the majority of the people that would have this oppressive mindset would be the very individuals the program would be targeting.  From there, a myriad of negative issues ranging from low employee morale to an increase in turnover could very well ensue.

Clarian should be able to skate by any potential legal accusations of this plan being an affront to individual employee civil liberties by protecting it under the guise of private enterprise.  Plus, they are only fining the employees; they are not threatening the employees with termination.  However, that does not mean an inequitable treatment of personal freedom does not exist under this strategy.  On the contrary, there is no denying that this plan essentially allows the employer to intrude on an employee’s life outside the confines of the office.  Even if it for a well-meaning cause, should they be allowed to have that right?  Is it okay for a company to deprive money from an individual because he or she does not live the way the company wants them to?  When looking at the plan from that angle, does it not look like a line or two is being crossed?

It will be interesting to monitor this plan after it launches a year and a half from now.  Clarian is wise for allowing a sizeable window of time for people to achieve the company goals.  However, even with the lengthy timeframe, the risk of alienating an employee base by potentially coming across as an intrusive, Orwellian figurehead coupled with the residual employee fallout that could result makes a wellness system like Clarian’s a poor and possibly disastrous option to choose.