There is this new craze in a company; all of a sudden, employees are trying to improve their health by going on a walk, climbing stairs, reading and taking quizzes on why our teeth go yellow...
like you guessed, everything is online! In general, the thought of a Facebook-like-website improving someone's health is ridiculous. But still, it's too early to say that the online portal is not able to make the employees healthy; only time will tell if it really helped the employees improve their health. As far as I know, the results that would really make a difference in the employees health are something like this:
- 5 employees quit smoking
- 20 employees started going to the gym regularly (and they have been very religious about it for the last 3 months)
- Over 20% of the employees have taken up a sport and they play the sport at least 3 times a week
- There is 40% decrease in the soft-drink consumption in the office
- There is a 30% increase in the number of drinking water cans consumed by the employees
That's what the results of a heath challenge should look like. By the way, this health challenge is a super-duper-hit with the employees.
It isn't totally because there are amazing features in this online health portal...it is considerably because the winner gets an iPad. Lets say, there are a 1500 employees in the company taking up the health challenge; the probability of winning the iPad is really good and it is definitely worth a shot. But we are missing the boat, what about employee's health, is the online portal actually planning to do anything about it? It surely doesn't seem to. In general, an online health portal can't push any employee to a workout session nor can it help employees understand why it is important to eat fruits...coz most of the guys in the office know about the health related problems, how to improve one's health etc.
Bottom line: to improve employees health, we need real trackers and helpers. For instance, a better investment to improve an employee's health is to have an office health inspector who can actually get personal with the employees and help them improve their health by physically being present at the office and at the office gym. I am guessing that the investment on the online portal is way more than the pay of a health inspector, so, even investment-wise, a health inspector is a better option.
