YOU CAN GET PAID TO GET FITTER
IT PAYS TO READ THE FINE PRINT BUT THERE ARE POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOR YOUR WALLET AND YOUR BODY IF YOU TAKE UP SOME OFFERS
Imagine if your daily walk could pay for the flights for your next holiday – how’s that for motivation to get you to your 10,000 steps? How about earning shopping vouchers or discounted movie tickets just for going to the gym or choosing a nutritious brekkie?
This isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky idea. In Australia, a handful of insurance companies are actually ‘paying’ their customers to make healthy lifestyle choices.
There’s the AIA Vitality program, which rewards its members with cheaper insurance premiums and discounts on movie tickets, flights, gym memberships and day spas for opting into health screenings, setting wellness goals and tracking their activity, sleep and eating.
The Qantas Wellbeing program allows you to rack up points for activities such as cycling, walking your dog, playing golf or even just having a good night’s sleep (with extra points on offer if you take up a travel or life insurance policy with Qantas).
Medibank customers can earn gift cards and expand their extras cover by tracking healthy actions via the Live Better app.
If you want in but don’t have insurance, you can sign up to Jumpa, a health and fitness app that allows users to earn points for exercise, which can then be redeemed for a range of ‘gifts’ from retailers such as JB Hi-Fi, Myer, Lorna Jane, Red Balloon and Rebel. Even workplaces are getting in on the action with their own wellness schemes that offer employees rewards such as subsidised fitness trackers and gym memberships.
THE POWER OF INCENTIVES
It seems like a no-brainer – you get healthier and you’re rewarded for it. But does it work? The short answer is yes.
There’s plenty of scientific evidence to support incentivising healthy behaviours.
One review published in the British Journal of
Sports Medicine this year found that even small rewards encourage people to increase their step count by about 10–15 per cent.
But ‘paying’ people to get healthy isn’t straightforward. “The type of incentive that you use and how you provide that incentive makes a difference [to the success of the individual and the program],” says Professor Andrew Wilson, an expert in public health and director of the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.
“Whether it’s a reward or a penalty makes a difference to its impact. The type of behaviour that you’re trying to change and the type of reward you offer for that change is also important.” For example, if you’re trying to change a long-term behaviour, such as your diet, having a system that evolves over time to encourage maintenance could prove more effective.
Financial incentives tend to work best in the short term, Prof Wilson notes, with the effectiveness wearing off down the track. So a badly designed wellness program could end up destroying the participants’ genuine motivation as the incentive to maintain the behaviour loses impact over time.
The missing link here is intrinsic motivation, says performance coach Andrew May. “I think these incentives can be a really good initiative to get people started, but I think if it doesn’t go down to a deeper reward system and if it’s not aligned to their values or purpose, then people often drop off,” he explains.
WHAT’S THE CATCH?
There’s a flip side to insurance companies and workplaces offering rewards for wellness habits. For one, insurers can benefit directly from your health kick from having to pay out fewer claims (poorly managed chronic diseases cost the economy $320 million a year) and for workplaces it can lead to improved productivity.
These corporations also get access to your data. Schemes that use a wearable device or smartphone app to clock your steps, monitor your heart rate and track your meals end up collecting reams of valuable information.
“Any one small piece of this data may not seem like a huge risk to your privacy, but the companies that collect this information ‘join the dots’ of all these little crumbs to generate a much bigger picture about you,” explains Trent Yarwood, from digital advocacy group Future Wise. “It may seem like you’re receiving something for nothing, but the trade-off is that companies have more detailed information about you to ‘help serve you better’.”
Your information could also be shared with third parties that may not have the same privacy policy in place or be subject to Australia’s privacy laws, adds Lilly Ryan, a board member for Digital Rights Watch. “It’s important to be aware of that and be fully across the privacy policies of any companies you’re dealing with,” she says. That means reading the fine print carefully, no matter how tedious, and paying careful attention to key phrases like ‘share with trusted partners’.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t sign up to an incentive scheme, just that it’s important to be aware how your sensitive data may be used and deciding whether you’re OK with that.
The bottom line is that as long as you make an informed decision, these kinds of rewards programs could be lucrative – for your wellness and your wallet.
The good news is that incentives to improve health are likely to become more common in Australia, says Prof Wilson. “I think they’ll be much more tailored,” he predicts. “They’ll be some of the tools that are used within the space to encourage health and wellbeing.” Get ready to cash in.