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According to Benefits Pro, “Wellness programs are all the rage.” But as we know, a great program is only great if your employees are engaged and active.

To that end, Benefits Pro reports on a session at at the National Business Group on Health's annual conference. Here, various corporate wellness experts discussed “how they use incentives and rewards to drive employee participation.”

Some of best practices included:

• “Reward healthy behavior, and reward with accuracy.”
• “Make it personal.” Said Inta Brazelis-Simeone, manager of benefits at Textron Systems: “The incentive needs to resonate personally with your employee but it also needs to resonate broadly.”
• “Reward often and promptly.” Said Brazelis-Simeone: “We design incentives as a motivator to help them and help them help themselves.”
• “Pay it forward. Think beyond gift cards or discounts when considering rewards. Many wellness programs are beginning to offer employees to give their incentive money earned to different charities and organizations.”
• “Keep it fresh. The value of incentives change as the needs and situations of your employees change.”
• “Communication is key.” Said Kembre Roberts, manager of people at Southwest Airlines: “If you can't get the word about wellness to your employees, and to their spouses, and tell them what's going on, it's not going to work.”
• “Ask employees what they want. Wellness simply is about your people, Huffman said, so it's important to understand what they want out of the programs.”
• “Focus on employee health… to have a successful wellness program, you need to address employee health concerns and listen to what they want out of it.”