Wellness Incentive Lottery: Will It Work?

Here’s a rundown on the launch of a new wellness program at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. It seems like a pretty basic employee wellness plan with HRA, coaching, online tools, etc.

One detail worth nothing, though: It’s offering a $100 Visa gift card as an incentive—but the first 200 people to sign up participate are entered in a drawing for one of 10 certificates.

That's sort of an incentive by lottery.

We suspect that’s less of a motivator than an incentive directly tied to a specific behavior for anyone who does it, like signing up for an HRA, completing a coaching session, etc.

Speaking of wellness incentives, here’s a report from the Occupational Hazards website on an employee survey about things employees say would motivate them to participate in a wellness program.

No surprise: Cash leads the list.