Steve
03-14-2007, 06:28 PM
Should employees be fined for not living healthier lifestyles? It seems Scotts Lawn Care is doing just that.
What's your view on this?
Get Healthy—Or Else (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_09/b4023001.htm) - Scotts employees are now urged to take exhaustive health-risk assessments. Those who balk pay $40 a month more in premiums. Using data-mining software, Whole Health analysts scour the physical, mental, and family health histories of nearly every employee and cross-reference that information with insurance-claims data. Health coaches identify which employees are at moderate to high risk. All of them are assigned a health coach who draws up an action plan. Those who don't comply pay $67 a month on top of the $40. "We tried carrots," says Benefits Chief Pam Kuryla. "Carrots didn't work."
Many employees found Hagedorn's new policy intrusive. Topic A: the health assessment questionnaires, which asked things like: Do you smoke? Drink? What did your parents die of? Do you feel down, sad, hopeless? Burned out? How is your relationship with your spouse? Your kids? Are you pregnant, diabetic, suffering from high cholesterol? The tobacco ban was controversial, too, especially at the manufacturing plants, where Skoal chewers are common. Hagedorn wasn't unsympathetic. After all, it took his own wife three years to quit smoking. Scotts employees would get all the help they needed.
What's your view on this?
Get Healthy—Or Else (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_09/b4023001.htm) - Scotts employees are now urged to take exhaustive health-risk assessments. Those who balk pay $40 a month more in premiums. Using data-mining software, Whole Health analysts scour the physical, mental, and family health histories of nearly every employee and cross-reference that information with insurance-claims data. Health coaches identify which employees are at moderate to high risk. All of them are assigned a health coach who draws up an action plan. Those who don't comply pay $67 a month on top of the $40. "We tried carrots," says Benefits Chief Pam Kuryla. "Carrots didn't work."
Many employees found Hagedorn's new policy intrusive. Topic A: the health assessment questionnaires, which asked things like: Do you smoke? Drink? What did your parents die of? Do you feel down, sad, hopeless? Burned out? How is your relationship with your spouse? Your kids? Are you pregnant, diabetic, suffering from high cholesterol? The tobacco ban was controversial, too, especially at the manufacturing plants, where Skoal chewers are common. Hagedorn wasn't unsympathetic. After all, it took his own wife three years to quit smoking. Scotts employees would get all the help they needed.