Virgin Pulse and mandatory workforce wellbeing programs

amandaeve

What are your thoughts?

A good friend of mine is required by her employer to accumulate a certain number of “points” via an online program to maintain her health insurance benefit. She is a well-paid, highly educated professional in the peak of her career (US). Her employer employs “unskilled” workers along with those beyond her pay grade. I used to be jealous of friends who worked at places with wellness programs because I believe in the power of preventative health and agree that healthier people are more productive. When her work rolled out this wellness program, “Virgin Pulse” it sounded like it did a lot to motivate her. They sent her a Wi-Fi-enabled scale and she lost about 20 pounds. I thought it was neat for her to get a free scale and free diet advice. Fast forward a couple of years, she’s gained the weight back and was struggling to get enough “points” so she invited me to join (you get points for getting a friend to join). I was excited to compare Virgin to mfp….but then I got to see how problematic it is:

1) I synced it to my Garmin, just like mfp. However, it transferred step counts and general activity time, but not stairs climbed or bike time (I had to enter those manually). Why? How many other errors does it make? I would be annoyed if I had to take the time to manually enter all that just to have insurance.

2) It’s weight-loss biased. You get more points the more weight you have to lose. That’s great…but how does one keep their insurance after they get to their goal weight? Most people aren’t athletes and shouldn’t have to be.

3) It’s culturally biased and language biased. Virgin pulse puts you in a box. For example; You get a “stress management point” if you sit and have a cup of tea. Why do you have to de-stress with tea? My father hates tea. Does he not deserve to be insured? You get a “finance management point” if you don’t buy a latte. <soapbox> I always hated the stupid “latte principal”. There was a time when I had a low income. I couldn’t afford to go out to dinner, but every once in a while I could afford to get a latte. It was an incredible treat! The whole process felt so indulgent and special. The ritual of walking into a fragrant shop and having someone else prepare a thing for you while you watched. I felt pampered and special. I still do. I love going out and buying lattes, every single time. The amount of money I’d save not buying lattes (about 2 outfits-worth of $ a year) will never equal the joy I get from them in the moment. </soapbox>

4) My friend’s workplace assumes their staff all have access to technology. Employees are required to update their activity on their own unpaid time. And, since her spouse is on her insurance plan, he has to participate too. Apparently having insurance at one of the states’ top employers is also linked to the privileges of having a computer at home, as well as the disposable time and skills to use it.

5) Another friend (same town) told me about how her employer requires staff to wear pedometers on the job along with symbols on their name-tags representative of their specific health achievements. She found that “program” to be a violation or privacy and I agree. However, her program was a little more personalized in that you set your own goals. She’s not locked into drinking tea and avoiding coffee.

6) With all the talk about requiring welfare recipients to take drug tests and other hoops people have to jump through to receive free benefits, I find it insulting that some adults are now having to jump through hoops just to get part of their employment-conditional compensation package.

Butterchop

We have the Virgin Pulse program at my work but it is completely different . You do have to manually put in workouts but they are converted to steps for points. It has nothing about tea or stress relief. Also no points are awarded based on weight loss. Points are awarded based on checking in every day, getting 6+ hours of sleep, tracking calories on here, hosting challenges with friends ( like a weekend step off to see who gets the most steps), searching recipes and checking yes to random challenges they hold. Last month was a "take the stairs" challenge where you just check yes. Ours is voluntary to join, costs $2 a month, and has quarterly awards of $125. However if you join there is a "insurance incentive" of 20$ which goes to your insurance premium each month. You do not have to do anything but up on to qualify for that incentive. I joined because I walk all day at work so easily get the cash each month.

amandaeve

Wow, @Butterchop that sounds like a much better deal!

Wendyanneroberts

2) It’s weight-loss biased. You get more points the more weight you have to lose. That’s great…but how does one keep their insurance after they get to their goal weight? Most people aren’t athletes and shouldn’t have to be.

I was thinking about this "incentive" to earn points for weight loss. But not if you are already a healthy weight or manage to maintain a healthy weight, after losing. It seems that it would actualy offer more points, if you first regained some of the weight. As you would earn points losing weight again?

I'm not suggesting people would gain weight on purpose, but surely for health reasons encouragement to maintain would be more beneficial?

hesn92

That sounds like way too much for a workplace wellness program and very invasive. All I have to do to get my wellness points (worth $1200 into my HSA) is take a biometric screening and get good numbers and fill out a little online questionnaire, and get a flu shot. And my husband has to do the same. If you don't get good numbers (cholesterol, blood pressure, BMI etc) there are a few other things you can do to earn points but they are really easy.

These workplace wellness programs are kind of silly though. Like I took my online health assessment and one of the questions was "how many times a week do you eat a snack" and I answered every day, and it gave me a negative point for that lol. It assumed "snack" meant cookies and chips and stuff like that. I EAT FRUIT FOR A SNACK for christ's sake. But whatever.

amandaeve

Wendyanneroberts wrote: »

2) It’s weight-loss biased. You get more points the more weight you have to lose. That’s great…but how does one keep their insurance after they get to their goal weight? Most people aren’t athletes and shouldn’t have to be.

I was thinking about this "incentive" to earn points for weight loss. But not if you are already a healthy weight or manage to maintain a healthy weight, after losing. It seems that it would actualy offer more points, if you first regained some of the weight. As you would earn points losing weight again?

I'm not suggesting people would gain weight on purpose, but surely for health reasons encouragement to maintain would be more beneficial?

Yeah, I think it's more like a point for "I skipped dessert", "I didn't snack" , "I ate a light dinner", "I brought my lunch to work" things that could be detrimental for someone with anorexia, bulimia, cancer, or bulking, etc. etc.

CSARdiver

In my last two firms we implemented wellness programs and both rather successfully. Both were very comprehensive and prioritized ideally. First with weight and calorie intake, then activity, then lifestyle and habit forming. It was largely based on a CICO philosophy.

$250 health grants were available to everyone with the submission of a form. This typically went towards gym memberships, running shoes, FitBits, etc.

This resulted in reduced insurance premium cost to those who participated and an overall cost reduction as long as a certain percentage of employees enrolled in the program.

End of year results were positive for those enrolled in the program and I suspect this had an overall positive influence on the overall population.

kami3006

If it's opt-in, then fine. But there is no way I would work for a company that required this in order to keep medical benefits. It's invasive. Plus, I intentionally have a job where I leave my work behind at the end of the day. Being expected to track and log this, on my own time, as part of my salary (which includes benefits) is a grand-overstep of authority and frankly unethical IMO.

Butterchop

amandaeve wrote: »

Wow, @Butterchop that sounds like a much better deal!

It really is a good deal! I keep expecting it to change and become harder to get the rewards but its been the same for several years. They just added the insurance discount last year and still a majority do not participate. Our work offers other insurance incentives too. A health screening, getting a dental and vision exam, a yearly age required test , and spouses getting there health screening earns up to I think 400 on a Health spending card. All of those are covered 100% with pur insurance and the majority still don't get those or send the forms in. I do all those things anyway ( I have horrible family medical history so am paranoid) but I do not have health insurance at work so don't qualify for the incentives.

amyepdx

My employer (Kroger) just ended the health screenings this year. Instead of $100 each for passing the 4 metrics, everyone gets $200 and then you get another $100 as long as you go to one wellness appt next year.
My guess is that the cost of administering this for 450,000 employees (not sure what % were eligible) wasn’t worth it.
Also, taking a look around my particular campus, it wasn’t doing much good.
However, a fitness challenge they offered in 2015 started me on my weight loss and I was even one of the 10 grand prize winners, so I am grateful for that. They haven’t done one of those since either.

Packerjohn

My company started something probably 20 years ago where the employee and spouse had to fill out a health assessment to not be charged an extra premium on employee provided health insurance. You just had to fill out a form with a bunch of personal health, exercise and diet questions. Company said they were using the data at a macro level to track health trends.

You just had to fill it out and send it in, no check for accuracy. Anyone that didn't want to share personal information was putting down they drank 3 cases of beer a day and ate 10 lbs of wings.

Program was dropped about 5 years ago.

suzan06

My husband's does the stupid virgin pulse thing. You have to constantly do crap on the app. I quit doing it. They used to have an annual screening and that was it.

My company does various things. You can choose up to 6 for 100$ each. It is everything from a health screening to a step challenge to practicing meditation,to doing a phone call with the retirement plan. I don't love it but it is minimal effort for 600$.

Xerogs

We have Virgin Pulse here were I work and its completely voluntary. The points and health screenings give you a little extra funds to cover some medical expenses, prescriptions, and co-pays. I have been working towards better health for years even before this program so by participating its like free money to me. Plus I can link MFP and Fitbit data to it which helps keep track of things. I don't mind the tracking stats it sort of helps nudge me in the right direction when I start to slack, kind of like daily logging with MFP. I don't participate in a lot of the challenges nor compete with my friends in the program and I am always surprised when someone talks to me about trying to catch me in steps because I don't pay a lot of attention to it other than it gives me some extra funds in my health spending account when goals are met. I think it can be taken to extremes and from what I have read in this thread it looks like some companies are going about it the wrong way. A lot of the Virgin Pulse tracking entries are pretty generic and they try to be "hip" so I don't take them literally, if the Healthy Habit is something you never do but you do something close to what they are saying then I give it a "yes". I know we can modify our Healthy Habits to more closely resemble what we are doing day to day and to get points on our program you only need to have two.

sugom2

My employer offers Real Appeal paid for through United Health Care. To qualify, you have to have a poor BMI, which I did. They too sent us a digital bathroom scale, a awesome food scale, a small blender (similar to Magic Bullet), measuring cups and a portion plate, exercise videos, resistance bands and a cookbook. We also have on-line meetings once a week with your coach (several members are in the class as well), and can do additional one-on-one classes with your coach if you choose. They teach you how/what to eat and promote overall wellness. Totally free--for a year. If you still have the poor BMI after the year, you can continue the classes on maintenance and you will always have access to the site, just the on-line classes disappear. Not bad, huh

Aaron_K123

Privacy issues aside I guess this sort of thing makes sense to me. An insurance company is going to be going emotionlessly off of actuary tables. If there is sufficient evidence that routine exercise lowers the chance of hospitilization and thus cost to the insurance company then it makes sense for them to adjust costs accordingly. They can offer lower costs to those who exercise and shift the costs to those who don't. If it is indeed true that exercise lowers the chance of incurring hospital costs from illness then this makes sense.

Now that said I think privacy is an issue here. Not sure it is really your employers buisness whether or not you exercise and it is questionable if insurance companies should be having that much data related to individuals lives or personal choices.

dyfalbarhad

Your insurance should never depend on wellness activities. That’s ridiculous.

hesn92

^^ I guess I missed that bit, that she is required to do these things in order to maintain her health insurance benefit. The wellness program at my work isn't connected to my health insurance. I get the same insurance and pay the same premium whether I participate in the wellness program or not. My company just gives me some extra $$ if I do.