Employee Wellness Incentive Program Ideas - Increase Engagement

Employee wellness incentive programs can help boost your team’s morale and productivity.

Let's be real—wellness programs without personalized incentives rarely stick.

Employees in modern workplaces struggle to juggle tight deadlines, burnout, and ever-reducing personal time, so they are often unwilling to take on more commitments in the name of wellness programs.

That’s why a good employee wellness incentive program empowers members to pursue their personal lifestyle goals while also achieving your company’s business objectives.

In this article, we’ll discuss effective wellness incentive ideas, including how to implement a wellness incentive program that drives behavior change and creates tangible impact for your organization.

TL;DR - Wellness Incentives Ideas

Can’t read the whole blog right away? Here are the main wellness incentive ideas to inform your engagement strategy:

Physical Wellness Incentives

Mental Health Wellness Incentives

Recognition Wellness Incentives

Financial Wellness Incentives

Continue reading for an in-depth review of each incentive and its potential benefits to your team.

What Are Employee Wellness Incentive Programs?

As the name suggests, employee wellness incentive programs are initiatives designed to inspire and empower employees to engage actively in wellness activities and sustain healthy behaviors. The wellness incentives target various aspects of employee wellness, including physical, mental, financial, and self-care needs.

You can also introduce wellness incentive programs to recognize and reward employees who reach significant milestones, like birthdays, career goals, or work anniversaries.

Key Benefits of Wellness Incentives for Employees

Employee wellness incentive programs offer both monetary and non-monetary benefits to the employees, all of which contribute to the company’s long-term success. 

These benefits include:

• Improved Morale: Wellness incentives spark genuine enthusiasm and a sense of belonging in the workplace, as members feel appreciated and valued by the company.
• Increased Employee Engagement: Wellness incentives can help employees find fulfillment in their work. They also feel a sense of ownership, which motivates them to help the company achieve its goals.
• Reduced Stress and Burnout: Thoughtfully designed wellness incentives help your team recharge and build sustainable self-care habits.
• Improved Corporate Culture: Wellness incentives help reinforce healthy behaviors, making them the new standard of the corporate culture. For example, health-focused wellness incentives, like gym subscriptions and step trackers, nudge employees to make fitness part of their daily routine. When all employees focus on and discuss their health with colleagues, it fosters a healthier and more positive work environment.
• Lower Employee Turnover: Wellness incentives enhance employees’ job satisfaction. This increases their likelihood of staying at the company. Additionally, these incentives increase your company’s attractiveness to top talent.

How to Structure a Wellness Incentive Program That Works

Developing a wellness incentive program is quite similar to starting a corporate wellness program, as both focus on enhancing employees’ holistic well-being. However, wellness incentive programs are reward-centered.

Below is a step-by-step guide for creating a successful wellness incentive program for your team:

1. Define Wellness Goals: Outline what you want to achieve with the employee wellness incentive program, such as boosting employee engagement and morale. But ensure that the wellness goals also align and support company objectives.
2. Identify Employee Wellness Needs: Start by listening—employee surveys, candid group discussions, and wellness culture audits are great first steps to establish employees’ expectations of the wellness incentive program. Also, evaluate your organization’s wellness culture and determine improvement areas.
3. Choose the Right Incentives: Select wellness needs that align with the company’s wellness culture. Suppose you want to create a culture of health and fitness. Your wellness incentives should encourage employees to eat healthy and exercise regularly. However, ensure that the selected wellness gifts align with the individual employee’s wellness goals.
4. Define a Budget: Clearly map your wellness incentive budget to match your team's size, culture, and long-term goals. The cost will depend on whether you want to implement a one-time employee wellness incentive program or a continuous initiative with periodic rewards.
5. Partner with a Wellness Marketplace: Shortlist suitable wellness marketplaces and request live demos to see how the platforms work. At SoHookd, our curated Wellness Marketplace makes gifting meaningful incentives effortless, personalizing rewards that genuinely resonate with your employees' wellness journeys.
6. Test and Iterate: Monitor essential metrics to evaluate the wellness incentive program’s impact on employees’ well-being. Some metrics to watch include employee participation rates and satisfaction scores, which can provide actionable insights on how to refine the program.

Best Wellness Incentives Ideas That Drive Engagement

Wellness incentives should cater to employees’ holistic well-being, including their physical, mental, emotional, and self-care needs. Also, wellness gifts for employees should align with individual preferences and lifestyle needs. 

Here’s a quote from B.J. Wiley Williams, our Founder and CEO, about wellness incentives:

“...have an incentive that's aligned with interests, so it gets them excited, gets them motivated to do something. But then have the incentive really tie back to the behavior that you're trying to incentivize.”

Below are the best wellness incentive ideas to inspire you:

Physical Wellness Incentives

These thoughtful incentives inspire your team to stay active and integrate fitness seamlessly into their daily lives. You could also introduce physical wellness incentives for your team to dissuade employees from a sedentary lifestyle. 

Suitable physical wellness gifts include:

1. Gym Memberships: Offer subsidized fitness classes to entice employees to work out regularly. You could also provide fitness clothing, such as gym shorts, sports bras, and sneakers, to encourage your team to participate in community-based activities like marathons and hikes.
2. Healthy Office Snacks: Stock your office kitchen with organic snacks, like dry fruits, milkshakes, and dark chocolate, to help employees make healthy eating choices.
3. Fitness Trackers: Gift members smartwatches or premium fitness trackers so they can monitor their daily steps, hydration levels, and sleep patterns.

Mental Health Wellness Incentives

These are wellness gifts that enhance members’ self-care during and after high-pressure tasks, helping them avoid burnout, stress, and anxiety. 

Examples include:

4. Flexible Schedules: Allow employees to plan their hours and support asynchronous shifts for remote teams so they can work when they are most productive.
5. Additional Paid Time Off: Provide added PTO days to allow employees experiencing burnout to take scheduled breaks from work.
6. Self-Care Packages: Gift employees with paid spa sessions or spa kits, like calming teas, aromatherapy candles, etc., to promote self-care habits after work or on weekends.

Recognition Wellness Incentives

These are rewards that show the company’s appreciation for employee contributions towards achieving company goals. For example, you could celebrate employees' key achievements—like Employee of the Month or significant milestones—with meaningful, personalized rewards.

Some top recognition wellness gifts include:

7. Career Development Opportunities: Offer paid tickets to expos or subsidize paid courses to members who perform exemplary work within the evaluation period.
8. Experience-Based Rewards: Gift top-performing employees with experiential rewards, such as paid trips and family lunches, as a form of appreciation.
9. Personalized Plaques: Send handwritten recognition cards or award trophies to members who emerge at the top of the challenge leaderboard.

Financial Incentives

You could offer wellness rewards to encourage members to take charge of their personal finances. Examples include:

Wellness incentives should never be used as a PR stunt to gift employees. The gifts should resonate with your team and encourage members to pursue their lifestyle goals. Additionally, the wellness incentives should be psychology-backed to stimulate employee participation and reinforce healthy behaviors, making them an integral part of your wellness culture.

Download our free ebook to learn how employee wellness incentives can drive meaningful results for your company!

How to Maximize Participation with Health Incentive Programs

Wellness incentive programs often have varying outcomes. However, the outcomes often depend on how well the programs were implemented. 

As such, use our cheatsheet below to get the most out of your employee wellness incentive programs:

• Have Clear Goals: Outline what you want to achieve with the incentive programs and ensure the goals support the company’s business objectives.
• Personalize: Analyze employees’ wellness needs and align the incentives with their lifestyle goals. This helps increase participation and completion rates, making the programs effective.
• Gain Executive Support: Clearly demonstrate the value of your wellness initiatives through compelling data and employee stories to secure leadership buy-in.
• Involve Employees: Even the best intentions need proper messaging. As such, communicate the program’s goals to your employees and involve them starting from the planning phase.
• Track Performance: Evaluate employee participation rates and wellness impact for insights on how to refine the program. For example, conduct employee surveys to determine changes in motivation and job satisfaction. Also, we recommend using our free Wellness Program Audit Checklist to spot and address red flags in engagement, incentive design, and implementation efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Let’s wind up our guide by answering commonly asked questions about employee wellness incentive programs:

What Makes a Wellness Incentive Effective?

The following factors make a wellness incentive effective:

• Personalization to individual employee needs.
• Alignment with the organization’s wellness culture.
• Ease of redemption—employees should effortlessly access their wellness incentives without barriers.
  
  

How Do Corporate Wellness Program Incentives Affect Retention?

Corporate wellness program incentives affect retention in two ways:

• They make employees feel valued and recognized, boosting their sense of belonging.
• They keep employees motivated and productive, improving their job satisfaction levels.
  
  

What Are the Most Popular Health Incentives for Employees?

The most popular health incentives for employees include:

• Preventive healthcare benefits, like free flu shots and annual medical screening.
• Fitness stipends, like gym subscriptions and discounted yoga classes.
• Nutritious office snacks and subsidized healthy meal programs.
• Access to mental health and employee support groups.
  
  

How Often Should You Update Wellness Incentives?

There’s no specific timeline to update your wellness incentives. 

You could do it quarterly, annually, or tie it to specific wellness challenges, to ensure the incentives remain relevant to employees’ lifestyle needs and goals.

Conclusion

The wellness incentives discussed in this article should provide a good starting point when introducing initiatives to boost employee morale and engagement. Ultimately, personalized wellness incentives are the secret sauce for maximizing employee engagement and satisfaction.

Our SoHookd Wellness Marketplace helps you provide meaningful incentives by allowing employees to redeem gifts that support their wellness goals. Plus, at SoHookd, we're with you every step of the way—helping select recipients, managing rewards, and measuring impact to ensure success.

Ready to elevate your employee wellness strategy? Book a personalized strategy session and discover how SoHookd can drive lasting engagement.