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Employee Benefit News Canada brings you in-depth coverage and analysis on news and issues unique to Canada, its people, employers and administrative systems. For subscription information,click here
or call 888/280-4820 |
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NEWS & VIEWS
Your boss knows how many reps you did
New technology will enable employers to better manage their health and wellness programs. Until now, most employers have had to settle for an employee’s word that he is actually working out at the club, thereby earning the wellness bonus or discounted membership rate.
Now with MyTrack employers can know how many machines the employee used, how many reps they did and at what weight. All of this information is funnelled into a computer, which produces a performance index — an outcome measurement value that includes both strength and cardio activities. Employers can access the information and start rewarding the workers that are really cutting today’s fat and tomorrow’s health care costs.
“After all, it’s not that plastic membership card that impedes disease, it’s the regular participation in exercise at a precise level of exertion that gives off the benefit,” Reed Hanoun, president and inventor of MyTrak Health, says.
He adds that it’s a product that has come just in time for employers as they continue to struggle with double-digit health care cost inflation and an ageing workforce. Gyms should not just be where the fit go to be seen. Instead they should offer employers a real and measurable tool to help control health costs, according to Hanoun.
“It’s important that the industry shed the old image of taking the money and not producing results if they want to gain stature with employers and health insurance carriers,” he says.
Return to top Workplace friendships boost employee retention
Researchers at Concordia University and the University of Vermont are trying to determine how important it is to employers that workers like each other.
The purpose of the study, the professors write on their web site, is to investigate how employees may influence their co-worker’s attitudes toward their employer.
“Our model is suggesting that having friendships at work will tend to increase the affective commitment [of the employee],” Martin L. Martens, an assistant professor in the management department of Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, says.
Preliminary results show that if employees have friends at work they are more likely to be positively committed to their employer, and they are more likely to feel it is right to stay at the organization. That adds up to better retention, Martens says. “Those things combined are more likely to keep a person at the organization.”
The researchers plan to continue their research, expanding it to include what employers can do to promote friendships in the workplace. But, Martens concedes that workplace buddies don’t always get more done. To that end, the professor is also looking at the distinctions between task cohesion among workers--which does result in greater productivity--and social cohesion among workers, which does not.
Interested individuals and employers can participate in the friendship research online.
Return to top
Editor-in-Chief: Sheryl Smolkin |
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Your boss knows how many reps you did
New technology will enable employers to better manage their health and wellness programs. Until now, most employers have had to settle for an employee’s word that he is actually working out at the club, thereby earning the wellness bonus or discounted membership rate.
Now with MyTrack employers can know how many machines the employee used, how many reps they did and at what weight. All of this information is funnelled into a computer, which produces a performance index — an outcome measurement value that includes both strength and cardio activities. Employers can access the information and start rewarding the workers that are really cutting today’s fat and tomorrow’s health care costs.
“After all, it’s not that plastic membership card that impedes disease, it’s the regular participation in exercise at a precise level of exertion that gives off the benefit,” Reed Hanoun, president and inventor of MyTrak Health, says.
He adds that it’s a product that has come just in time for employers as they continue to struggle with double-digit health care cost inflation and an ageing workforce. Gyms should not just be where the fit go to be seen. Instead they should offer employers a real and measurable tool to help control health costs, according to Hanoun.
“It’s important that the industry shed the old image of taking the money and not producing results if they want to gain stature with employers and health insurance carriers,” he says.