Virgin Pulse and mandatory workforce wellbeing programs

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.