Incentives run the world. People go to work in exchange for a salary. My dog sits when I tell her to because she knows I am holding a dog biscuit. Likewise, companies have recently started to "incentivize" the health and overall wellness of their employees.
While incentives are a good way to encourage positive behavior, employee health incentives detract from overall wellness just as much as they promote it.
The issue of employee wellness is a hot topic of discussion. The world-renowned Cleveland Clinic's decision to stop hiring applicants who cannot or will not quit smoking effective in September of this year sparked the debate. A recent column in the Plain Dealer wondered at the Clinic's newly created position of "chief wellness officer" and questioned whether excluding smokers from jobs may lead to eventually excluding obese, environment-polluting or "sexually at-risk" individuals as well.
While I'm not worried that the Cleveland Clinic will adopt a policy of screening job applicants based on moral issues such as "charitable contributions or marital indiscretions," I agree with this writer's point that forcing applicants to give up smoking seems to benefit the hospital's image rather than individual health. (What about asking patients to quit smoking? Duh, but then who would pay medical bills?)
Distinctions between smoking and non-smoking employees already exist in most workplaces. For example, employees who smoke qualify for less of the insurance coverage offered by their employer. This idea makes sense, but the Clinic takes it a step further, implicitly arguing that smoking is detrimental to not only the smoker's health but also the productivity of the hospital. Granted, some patients may suffer when hospital employees smell strongly of cigarette smoke, but this issue is not threatening enough to warrant discrimination against foul smelling but otherwise perfectly qualified workers.
Recently, I attended a meeting in which the managers of the small private company where I work discussed their plan to install a small gym and two locker rooms for employee use. The president of the company emphasized that making a gym available sends a good message about the company's attitude towards its employees. He also mentioned his wish to somehow incentivize aspects of wellness within the company.
While I do not think my employer is planning to hire only those applicants who meet his standards of wellness (send in your resume and your fastest mile time?), giving employees incentives to use a gym at work is still a problematic idea. Such a policy looks out for employees' health, but it sounds oddly like a patronizing PE requirement.
I enjoy including exercise in my daily routine, so compulsory gym use would probably increase my overall wellness. Assuming that everyone will draw as much satisfaction from enforced exercise, however, is risky as well as condescending.
In general, the encouragement of healthy lifestyles in the workplace is a good thing. Efficiency, however, is even more important to an organization than employee health and wellness. Workplaces strive to employ people who work hard in the organization's best interests. In order to create such an environment, a workplace needs to provide its employees with the feeling that they are welcome regardless of their individual lifestyle choices, as long as those lifestyle choices do not interfere with their productivity. Incentivizing certain "better" lifestyle choices is a veiled way for an organization to push its ideas of what is best for an individual onto someone who has the right to think for himself.
While my employer's desire to augment the wellness of his employees is not a bad thing in itself, his concern can easily be converted into a policy like the Clinic's, which alienates employees by patronizingly dictating personal choices that have little or no effect on productivity in the workplace. I, like the Cleveland Clinic, hope that the numbers of smokers in America will decline for the sake of individual health, but unlike the Clinic, I do not think statistical improvement should be at the expense of those individuals' fundamental rights to personal expression and security.
