What is this about?

A major challenge for all U.S. employers is implementing employee wellness programs without triggering any regulatory compliance problems.  Historically, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been the main federal agency concerned about the potential for U.S. employers to use their wellness incentive features to discriminate unfairly against various groups of employees.  Much of this concern has turned out to be unfounded but was legitimately stimulated by a few over-zealous employers putting limitations on health benefits coverage for self-imposed health practices, such as smoking or not wearing seat belts or requiring unreasonable health outcomes to secure the incentive reward. The other major regulatory concern for U.S. employers in the wellness space has been the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and specifically the prevention of unauthorized disclosures of individual health information. Additionally, a few states have somewhat more detailed privacy and confidentiality provisions and a few have some tobacco use protections that apply to employees in their respective states. However, the incentive regulatory issues and the EEOC’s role have been the most problematic for U.S. employers.

The document in this edition of Connections newsletter contains a number of programming recommendations that are intended to completely prevent any potential incentive compliance problem with employee wellness initiatives.

Why is this important?

This document is important because it provides programming strategies that are intended to virtually eliminate any potential for employee complaints and subsequent compliance problems associated with wellness incentive features.  This has the effect of removing an annoying and potentially risky unknown from the management of employee wellness programs while safeguarding the controversy-free operation of your program.

What can you do with this document?

• First, read it to get a sense of what it calls for from wellness program and incentive management.
• Next, determine which of the recommendations should be included in your program management strategy for the next programming cycle.
• Then, layout which additional recommendations should be incorporated into the wellness program incentive feature over the next couple of years.
• Periodically evaluate the effects of the changes in securing effective and efficient program operations.

In summary, this set of recommendations about wellness incentive design and operation are intended to provide a pragmatic approach to minimizing the potential for employee complaints regarding wellness incentives and significantly reducing the risk of compliance problems with the EEOC.