Award-Winning Wellness Incentive Program Turns Five
Faculty and professional staff posing outside of the Drexel Recreation Center at the 2021 Employee Olympics — A Healthier U event — on Dec. 15, 2021. Monica Fauble, wellness consultant, who oversees A Healthier U, is pictured center, with hands up. Photo credit: Hanbit Kwon.
The wellness incentive program at Drexel, which is part of the University’s “A Healthier U,” has been helping employees who wish to improve their health and providing financial incentives to those who take steps to do so for five years.
Since 2017, full-time and part-time benefits-eligible faculty and professional staff enrolled in a Drexel medical plan, as well as full-time employees who waived medical coverage, have been welcome to participate in A Healthier U, as have their spouses and domestic partners who are enrolled in a Drexel medical plan or who have a full-time Drexel spouses or partners who waive medical coverage. The Health Advocate, which helps organizations create and support employee health initiatives, partnered with Drexel to establish the program, which runs annually from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30.
Participants can benefit by completing medical exams and appointments, creating an annual Personal Health Profile, partaking in Drexel and Health Advocate wellness events and challenges, and attending online workshops. Each completed activity yields a designated number of wellness points — getting a flu shot nets 50 points, for instance — and each point equals $1 on the employee’s next paycheck. Employees can earn up to $400 per year; spouses and domestic partners can earn up to $250. The Personal Health Profile must be filled out each year for a spouse or an employee to receive payouts.
Last year, 868 employees received a collective sum of $269,535 for completing the wellness incentive program, and 103 spouses and domestic partners received a $28,200 payout. Employees recorded 2,538,316 minutes exercised and 495,245,216 steps walked in 2021.
The program has changed and grown over the years, with offerings expanding in size, diversity of conditions addressed and the means of delivery. The Health Advocate’s website offers fitness and nutrition challenges and webinars on personal finance, mindfulness and other topics. Drexel hosts additional events, as wellness consultant Monica Fauble, who has overseen A Healthier U since its inception in 2011, creates webinars, sessions and practices that reflect employee requests and/or her own sense of community needs.
The events have featured a variety of internal and external partners, like the Drexel Meditation Group and the Drexel Food Lab for the former, and the Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union, Drexel’s preferred financial partner, for the latter. Fauble, who is a licensed acupuncturist and certified yoga instructor, also leads Drexel events. In the past year, she offered workshops on everything from Somatic movement therapy to student loan repayment. A list of in-person and virtual Drexel-hosted events appears in the “events” section of the A Healthier U website and on Drexel Human Resources’ events calendar page (look for the events with “wellness points” listed in the title).
“We are always looking to form new partnerships with subject-matter experts who can help our employees enhance their wellbeing,” said Fauble. “One of the great advantages of running an employee wellness program from within a university is the broad range of expertise available right here within our Drexel network.”
The University has received a Gold workplace award from the Wellness Council of America (WELCOA), the leading industry wellness group in the U.S, every year since the beginning of the A Healthier U program. In 2021, Drexel became the first workplace in the country to receive Platinum status from WELCOA, awarded only to organizations that met the highest standard of wellness support and distinguished themselves in workplace health promotion. That honor “speaks volumes to our efforts to care for our employees during COVID-19,” said Fauble.
“The pandemic took us all by surprise and created a radical shift in how we offer programming,” she added. “While we still have special in-person events, such as our popular Employee Olympics event, we are also offering much more programming virtually to engage our remote workforce and bring together employees across different offices and locations.”
Over half of the wellness incentive program’s existence has taken place during the COVID-19 pandemic, coinciding with a heightened awareness of physical, financial and emotional health needs as well as an obligation to provide virtual and hybrid events. A Microsoft Teams group was created for A Healthier U’s wellness community, offering channels for events as well as tips. Fauble said the daily Ten at 10 program created in 2020 “encourages a culture of care,” by offering 10-minute opportunities for guidance and activities for those working from home, unable to meet in person and juggling new responsibilities and stresses. You can earn $1 per activity by logging each occurrence on the “To Do” list on the Health Advocate website.
This year’s new additions to the program include an option to self-report preventative care doctor visits, including annual physicals, various cancer screenings, osteoporosis screenings and vision exams (eligible for 50 points, or $50, per each of those visits, and up to $200 total). You can also earn $50 for each dental visit, up to $100 total; dental visits must be self-reported in the Health Advocate website’s “To Do” list to receive points.
Participants can sign up during any point of the year. In April, A Healthier U virtual webinars and sessions include yoga for anxiety, meal planning, student loan repayment and forgiveness, and self-massage, stretching and stress reduction.
