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Fitbit: employer penalties for not using.
fishgutzy
Posts: 2,807 Member
Given that trackers are inaccurate, only track wrist movement and many other flaws, I'm surprised that many employers have started penalizing employees for not using these.
None of them work for swimming. They don't track weight lifting or spinning class (my main forms of exercise due to arthritis). The IR HRM doesn't work well for activities other than steady state. And if you start a lot they have even now trouble.
I would think that these penalties leave employers open to potentially large ADA lawsuits.
And yes offering a 'discount' for using it is the same as penalizing an employee for not using a company issued tracker.
I don't have any such mandate from an employer. I don't need one to swim as much as I do.
None of them work for swimming. They don't track weight lifting or spinning class (my main forms of exercise due to arthritis). The IR HRM doesn't work well for activities other than steady state. And if you start a lot they have even now trouble.
I would think that these penalties leave employers open to potentially large ADA lawsuits.
And yes offering a 'discount' for using it is the same as penalizing an employee for not using a company issued tracker.
I don't have any such mandate from an employer. I don't need one to swim as much as I do.
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We have a step tracker tied to an incentive program at my work. The tracker was free. The incentives pay up to $50 per quarter. Tracking steps is only one piece of earning those rewards though, so someone who is inactive or wheelchair bound can still earn the full amount through tracking other healthy habits.6
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The music teacher at the local high school has been winning the daily step counts. It turns out playing the piano was wracking up HUGE numbers of steps.
These things can be gamed.17 -
The music teacher at the local high school has been winning the daily step counts. It turns out playing the piano was wracking up HUGE numbers of steps.
These things can be gamed.
Exactly. Just one way that these things create fraud opportunity.
I swim 4 miles a day but that would never count.
And even the very expensive "swim" trackers do not count kick drill laps and missed laps if one dissent glide long enough after wall push.4 -
So maybe bring it up with the employer? Talk through the problem and see if it can be solved?
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I didn't even know this was a thing, what are the incentives/discounts towards?3
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Not an issue my my employer.pasandoval wrote: »So maybe bring it up with the employer? Talk through the problem and see if it can be solved?
But it seems to be a growing trend.
Yet these trackers are useless, in part because they are inaccurate.
The high end trackers that provide active athletes with good data to help them train are not the ones that employers are handing out.
It is my opinion that employer wellness director are falling to the fraud presented by slick salesmen.
Granted there was a flurry of articles about companies adopting this back in 2014 but very few articles that even reference it in 2016.
My guess is that eventually employers will realize they were bamboozled.
Or maybe I'm just full of 5#i7
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My employer purchased fitbits for all of the office employees about a year and a half ago. At the time, I already had had a fitbit for 2 years. It was not tied to any discounts on insurance premiums, but we did have fun incentive competitions with in the office. That has pretty much gone away now, and most of my co-workers no longer use their fitbits. We do have an annual health screening coming up in November. If we pass 5 bio markers, we do receive discounted health insurance premiums. When we began the annual health screening in Oct 2011, I was morbidly obese. Failed all but one of my biomarkers (cholesterol, thankfully good genes). March 2012 found MFP. Feb 2013 got a fitbit. For the past 2 health screenings. Passed all 5 bio markers. Still have my fitbit. Still use it everyday. It is the greatest motivator I have to get me moving more. Thanks to MFP & Fitbit, I am approaching my 3rd anniversary of maintenance. Love my Charge HR.
I don't think step tracking devices should be tied to health insurance premiums. Health care costs are out of control, but this will not fix it. Obama Care did not fix it. Corporate greed. Big business as usual.19 -
Could you link to a case or article about a company only discounting insurance for step tracker users? I have never heard of this. My employer has a list of two dozen or so possible activities/classes to do for a discount.0
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Do you have an article or information about employers requiring them?4
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Given that trackers are inaccurate, only track wrist movement and many other flaws, I'm surprised that many employers have started penalizing employees for not using these.
None of them work for swimming. They don't track weight lifting or spinning class (my main forms of exercise due to arthritis). The IR HRM doesn't work well for activities other than steady state. And if you start a lot they have even now trouble.
I would think that these penalties leave employers open to potentially large ADA lawsuits.
And yes offering a 'discount' for using it is the same as penalizing an employee for not using a company issued tracker.
I don't have any such mandate from an employer. I don't need one to swim as much as I do.
Agree it wouldbe interesting to see an artile. And I would be pretty sure if an employer I'd doing this it has been run by lawyers and legally there is not a penalty involved in not participatsting in the program. Even if the employee considers not getting a positive incentive a penalty.1 -
My workplace has had some fun contests with them (areas that have the most steps get to choose a charity to donate money to, etc), but they're totally optional and not tied to any discounts.3
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We have an incentive program and anyone who tests BMI and bloodwork gets an insurance bonus. If a certain percentage of the company participates there is an additional premium reduction. To add to this there is a FitBit (or other fitness tracker) bonus program where if you sync your account to the company healthsite you get premium bonuses and small incentives from every challenge. No one is penalized and I was not aware of anyone doing this.
Punitive measures have little to no chance of success and I'm surprised bad management still tries this stuff.2 -
‘voluntary’ is amended to permit penalties up to thousands of dollars if applied to a worker and their spouse for not participating and not divulging their health information to a wellness program,”
-Karen Pollitz, senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation
EEOC Rules Aim to Clarify Employer Wellness Programs(May 23, 2016)
I've read about this happening in places as diverse as the City of Kissimmee, Florida (government employees) to companies in Sweden. It's codified into law in the ACA , and the EEOC ruling verified that enormous penalties can be applied for refusing to participate or failure to meet employer-set mandates, including meeting step goals.1 -
From an EEOC press release on the topic: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/5-16-16.cfm
"Many employers offer workplace wellness programs intended to encourage healthier lifestyles or prevent disease. These programs sometimes use medical questionnaires or health risk assessments and biometric screenings to determine an employee's health risk factors, such as body weight and cholesterol, blood glucose, and blood pressure levels. Some of these programs offer financial and other incentives for employees to participate or to achieve certain health outcomes....
The final ADA rule provides that wellness programs that are part of a group health plan and that ask questions about employees' health or include medical examinations may offer incentives of up to 30 percent of the total cost of self-only coverage. The final GINA rule provides that the value of the maximum incentive attributable to a spouse's participation may not exceed 30 percent of the total cost of self-only coverage, the same incentive allowed for the employee. No incentives are allowed in exchange for the current or past health status information of employees' children or in exchange for specified genetic information (such as family medical history or the results of genetic tests) of an employee, an employee's spouse, and an employee's children.
However: see http://www.icemiller.com/ice-on-fire-insights/publications/data-privacy-and-workplace-wearables-can-employee/
"...to the extent data collected is used to reward healthy fitness behaviors (e.g., with a health premium discount or contribution to a health savings account), the underlying wellness program must comply with HIPAA nondiscrimination rules. HIPAA's nondiscrimination provisions require that company wellness programs allow a reasonable alternative, or waiver of the requirement, for employees unable to complete a health-related activity facilitated by use of a fitness tracker."
Additional information from the EEOC (from one of the links in the press release):
"The term "wellness program" generally refers to health promotion and disease prevention programs and activities offered to employees as part of an employer-sponsored group health plan or separately as a benefit of employment. Many of these programs ask employees to answer questions on a health risk assessment (HRA) and/or undergo biometric screenings for risk factors (such as high blood pressure or cholesterol). Other wellness programs provide educational health-related information or programs that may include nutrition classes, weight loss and smoking cessation programs, onsite exercise facilities, and/or coaching to help employees meet health goals....
...Title I of the ADA prohibits employers from denying employees access to wellness programs on the basis of disability, and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations (adjustments or modifications) that allow employees with disabilities to participate in wellness programs and to keep any medical information gathered as part of the wellness program confidential....
Before this final rule was issued, EEOC's ADA regulations stated that employers may make inquiries and conduct medical examinations that are part of a voluntary health program but did not define the term "voluntary" or explain what constitutes a "health program." The regulations also did not say whether the ADA allows employers to offer incentives to encourage employees to participate in such programs. EEOC issued this rule to provide guidance on the extent to which employers may offer incentives to employees to participate in wellness programs that ask them to answer disability-related questions or undergo medical examinations. The rule also explains the differences between the ADA's requirements for voluntary health programs and other federal laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as amended by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act), which governs wellness programs that are part of a group health plan.
...In issuing this final rule, EEOC sought to provide consistency with HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act rules on wellness program incentives, while also ensuring that incentives would not be so high as to become coercive and render participation in the program involuntary. The ADA also regulates certain aspects of wellness programs that HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act do not. Consequently, there are some differences between this rule and the wellness program rules under HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act.
HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act allow wellness programs that are part of an employer-sponsored group health plan to offer incentives for "health-contingent" wellness programs. These programs offer rewards to employees who perform activities (such as walk 10,000 steps a day) or achieve certain health outcomes (such as lowering their blood pressure), or impose penalties if they do not perform an activity or fail to achieve a particular outcome.
The regulations implementing HIPAA do not impose any incentive limits on "participatory" programs (such as programs that only ask employees to complete a HRA or attend a smoking cessation class). As long as these programs are available to all similarly-situated individuals, and incentives are made available regardless of a health factor (e.g., participating employees receive the same incentive regardless of the answers provided on a HRA about their health status, medical condition, medical history, or disability), participatory wellness programs do not violate HIPAA and the Affordable Care Act....
8. What are some examples of wellness programs that meet the "reasonably designed" standard?
A wellness program that asks employees to answer questions about their health conditions or have a biometric screening or other medical examination for the purpose of alerting them to health risks (such as having high cholesterol or elevated blood pressure) is reasonably designed to promote health or prevent disease. Collecting and using aggregate information from employee HRAs to design and offer programs aimed at specific conditions prevalent in the workplace (such as diabetes or hypertension) also would meet this standard....
9. When is an employee's participation in a wellness program considered "voluntary"?
Like the proposed rule, the final rule lists several requirements that must be met in order for an employee's participation in a wellness program that includes disability-related inquiries or medical examinations to be considered voluntary. Specifically, an employer:
may not require any employee to participate;
may not deny any employee who does not participate in a wellness program access to health coverage or prohibit any employee from choosing a particular plan; and
may not take any other adverse action or retaliate against, interfere with, coerce, intimidate, or threaten any employee who chooses not to participate in a wellness program or fails to achieve certain health outcomes.
Additionally, in order to ensure that an employee's participation is voluntary, an employer must provide a notice that clearly explains what medical information will be obtained, how it will be used, who will receive it, and the restrictions on disclosure. Finally, an employer must comply with the incentive limits explained below. (See Qs & As 12 - 14, below.)...
12. How much of an incentive may an employer offer to encourage employees to participate in a wellness program or to achieve certain health outcomes when a wellness program is offered as part of a particular health plan?
If a wellness program is open only to employees enrolled in a particular plan, then the maximum allowable incentive an employer can offer is 30 percent of the total cost for self-only coverage of the plan in which the employee is enrolled.
For example, if the total cost for self-only coverage for the plan in which the employee is enrolled is $6,000 annually, the employer can reward the employee up to $1,800 for participating in the wellness program and/or for achieving certain health outcomes (or penalize the employee up to the same amount for not participating and/or failing to meet health outcomes). The employer also could offer the same level of incentive if it offered only one group health plan but allowed any employee to participate in the wellness program regardless of whether he or she is enrolled in the health plan.
Pretty good piece: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/us-money-blog/2015/may/01/employers-tracking-health-fitbit-apple-watch-big-brother
Also: http://www.cio.com/article/2377723/it-strategy/pros-and-cons-of-using-fitness-trackers-for-employee-wellness.html8 -
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Ilovepeppers wrote: »I didn't even know this was a thing, what are the incentives/discounts towards?
Employers get reduced health insurance premiums when they can show their employees are taking steps to improve their health.
My company handed out Fitbit Ones a few years ago but now simply has a $100 reimbursement for people to use on/toward any tracker of their choice. We're given cash bonuses depending on the number of steps we take, amount of time spent exercising, amount of water we drink, and other things.3 -
My employer provides health insurance discounts for a voluntary annual wellness screening. Everyone who wants discounts can get them. If you don't want discounts, then it is as easy as not participating. As far as I am concerned, there are free blood tests and lower cost insurance... most people do it because it just makes sense. They use an outside company and my HR people don't know what my results are (until I brag to the entire office about how awesome I am, lol).
Occasionally, they will also do special events not tied to health insurance at all. Sometimes it involves getting particular steps or something and prizes for highest activity, or drawings. There was once, for example, that we would get to draw a playing card for 1 lap around our facility (around 0.7 miles), up to 5 per week. At the end of the week, our cards were compared as poker hands and the top hand got some sort of prize. There was an alternative of a certain amount of activity (can't remember how many minutes) for cards also. During one of the weeks, I was on vacation traveling. But I was hiking a whole lot on vacation and still got cards that week (someone else physically chose my cards for me). Someone who is disabled could perhaps do some other sort of physical activity. It doesn't punish anyone who doesn't participate... they just don't get a chance to win prizes. I see nothing wrong with this.1 -
Our program started out as a bonus and has turned punitive. I have colleagues who have time to take 2 hour lunches while other people are lucky to leave their desk to use the bathroom let alone to take the e-learning course on work life balance. I am stuck toward the crappy end of the spectrum but know a lot of people who have it worse.
I just try to remember what my boss told me once: "no one cares if you are happy"...it helps a lot.5 -
And yes offering a 'discount' for using it is the same as penalizing an employee for not using a company issued tracker.
People are being given the opportunity to earn a bonus, but have to do something extra for it. Some people are choosing not to. Deciding that your time is more valuable than the incentive isn't the same thing as being penalized.10 -
offering a stipend for an optional activity does not penalize people that don't participate.
They're trying to reduce their insurance costs.
My employer offers a little bit of cash to do an on-site health analysis once a year. I always take advantage of it.2 -
Many employers... hmmm.
Our company does.a walking challenge every year. It's for fun and they offer prizes. What sort of employer punishes their workers for not walking enough?0 -
There are trackers that aren't worn on the wrist, my Fitbit One is one of them. It's very accurate.
I read an article the other day about activity trackers not really making someone more active. I can't say that's necessarily true for me as I'm a lot more active now than I was when I get my One for Christmas in 2012. However, if there are enough studies with that conclusion perhaps employers will give up on that particular track.
My employer has switched the Wellness incentives they used to offer for merely getting a physical each year to one that is activity based. However, there are other things besides walking that you can do to earn the incentives so there's no penalty if you choose not to wear a tracker.0 -
@fishgutzy
My employer gave Fitbit HR to employees that joined a wellness challenge based on steps. Other than that, no discounts, no penalties.
Share your sources1 -
Many employers... hmmm.
Our company does.a walking challenge every year. It's for fun and they offer prizes. What sort of employer punishes their workers for not walking enough?
Same ones that punish their employees (via higher insurance premiums) for tobacco use?
Insurance is increasing at a faster rate than other costan for most businesses. They will get pretty creative to lower the impact on their bottom line.
Afrer smoking obesity is the largest preventable health hazard. Smart money to go after it. Do the trackers work, think the jury is still out.3 -
sounds like one of those false issues people get outraged over
can you believe people are protesting starbucks holiday cups?!?!?!??!4 -
The OP seems like a big stretch from a couple of articles about employers giving out Fitbits and starting optional wellness challenges.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3058462/how-fitbit-became-the-next-big-thing-in-corporate-wellnessMoreover, privacy advocates worry that wellness challenges could be used to penalize employees who decline to participate—or, worse, simply fail to succeed. Companies have increasingly used a combination of carrots (free vacation days!) and sticks (higher premiums) to coerce employees into participating in health screenings and wellness programs—a practice that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has fought with varying success. With trackers, it’s not always clear what data is being collected about employees’ health habits. "People might assume or expect that there are [privacy] protections," says the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Lee Tien, who specializes in privacy law. "But they don’t know what data is being collected." Most employers say that they only look at data in aggregate. But since HIPAA doesn’t cover wellness programs that aren’t integrated with insurers, in some cases, employees will need to take their company’s word for it.
http://www.cio.com/article/2377723/it-strategy/pros-and-cons-of-using-fitness-trackers-for-employee-wellness.htmlAs corporate healthcare costs continue to rise, observers say businesses will likely start to ask for more employee participation in wellness programs.
"Employers are increasingly calling the shots on how employees receive their benefits -- and workers may be penalized or rewarded depending upon how they take care of themselves," writes John F. Wasik in The Fiscal Times. "That means they may be subject to regular monitoring and told to enroll in healthcare management programs."
http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/employers-push-workers-to-wear-fitness-trackers/Fitness tracking devices like Fitbit and the new Apple Watch could very well become part and parcel of workplace wear, if employers get their way.
Thousands of employers around the nation are reportedly mulling mandates for employees to wear the devices by 2018 as part of workplace wellness incentive programs and as a means of combating rising health-care costs, MarketWatch reported.
“Tracker information will become part of your health record,” said Nancy Green, a health-care official with Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “[Employers] have a very large vested interest to make sure you’re healthy.”
Plenty of companies already offer wellness programs that entice employees to lose weight or quit smoking. The fitness tracking, however, is a new level of employer oversight of employee health – and some critics call it overkill. But companies, concerned about rising health-care costs, in part from Obamacare mandates, say they have to get creative.
“It’s an advantage to make employees as productive as possible,” said Malay Gandhi, managing director of health-focused venture-capital firm Rock Health, in MarketWatch.
These articles indicate that if privacy settings on activity trackers aren't tightened up, employers have the potential to use activity trackers to penalize employees.
Here's an example of a company using activity trackers to offer a carrot. Note that the activity tracker is not actually required, and employees can self-report:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aetna-pays-employees-to-sleep-more_us_570e78abe4b03d8b7b9f1712Here’s how the program works: For every 20 days an Aetna employee reports sleeping at least seven hours, he or she can earn $25 — up to $300 in total. If you don’t have a calculator handy, that would take 240 nights of good sleep.
Employees can sync a FitBit or similar health-tracking device to the company’s wellness program platform to have their sleep automatically tracked — or they can manually enter how much they sleep each night.
I haven't found an article about a company actually penalizing employees, and I didn't see anything about what specific companies have plans for integrating activity trackers into mandatory wellness plans by 2018.0 -
STOP FEAR MONGERING OP!!!!!2
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chocolate_owl wrote: »These articles indicate that if privacy settings on activity trackers aren't tightened up, employers have the potential to use activity trackers to penalize employees.
Remember, we're talking about devices that keep track of how much you walk. Some of them also claim to know how much/well you sleep but that's dubious and debatable.
There are some jobs where it might be appropriate to penalize employees for not walking enough. Like postal delivery workers who walk around putting mail in boxes. And police who walk a beat. If your job is walking and you aren't doing it, a penalty could be in order.
And I suppose if your job is to sit at a desk all day and your tracker shows you spent the day walking, that might conceivably raise some eyebrows. But even if your boss has access to everybody's step and time data, on an individual level, they still have to figure out how to look for patterns in it.
Overall it's hard to imagine many employers caring.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »chocolate_owl wrote: »These articles indicate that if privacy settings on activity trackers aren't tightened up, employers have the potential to use activity trackers to penalize employees.
Remember, we're talking about devices that keep track of how much you walk. Some of them also claim to know how much/well you sleep but that's dubious and debatable.
There are some jobs where it might be appropriate to penalize employees for not walking enough. Like postal delivery workers who walk around putting mail in boxes. And police who walk a beat. If your job is walking and you aren't doing it, a penalty could be in order.
And I suppose if your job is to sit at a desk all day and your tracker shows you spent the day walking, that might conceivably raise some eyebrows. But even if your boss has access to everybody's step and time data, on an individual level, they still have to figure out how to look for patterns in it.
Overall it's hard to imagine many employers caring.
"Have the potential" does not mean "will," and it's more a point to the questionable privacy of activity trackers than employers' true intentions. I think the people concerned about that are a bit paranoid and blowing things out of proportion.
I genuinely can't imagine activity trackers being a mandatory component of any health care plan. It's one thing to use them as incentives for employees to stay active on their own time if they wish, but it's another thing entirely to insist employees burn x calories per day or walk x steps (to...qualify for health care? to not incur higher premiums?) To me, that's an invasion of my privacy and mandating working off the job, and employers have no right to demand that. I would find a new job if my company tried to force that on me. It's not their business how much I move, how many calories I burn, how much I sleep, or how I eat. I do take advantage of the wellbeing programs my employer offers, like gym membership reimbursement and wellness coaching. I might take a tracker if it was offered as a bonus benefit, but not if it were somehow tied to me receiving health care or my terms of employment. I think employers know how their employees would react if activity trackers were mandatory, so it will never happen
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I think we should ignore "sleep tracking." A lot of the devices people use (Beth's Android Wear watch, any Apple Watch) have enough battery power to make it through a work day but need to be charged overnight. Others (like Fitbit One and other models) go in your pocket or on your belt, some of them have adapters that let you wear them to sleep but many people don't. And then there are concerns about being able to measure sleep with a motion sensor.
I could understand feeling like this was an invasion of privacy if it were mandatory, but to my knowledge that hasn't been the case. If it's something you can choose to do for a bonus to to spend less on your insurance, I don't have a problem with that. I'll gladly hand over my step data.
If we were talking about GPS data I'd be more concerned about privacy. But that's harder to measure and analyze; steps aren't a very useful measure but they're cheap and easy. Anyway since nobody is looking at where I went it really doesn't bother me. If my job wanted to see where I spent my off time that would be an entirely different thing.0
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