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Apple Watch, Fitness Trackers: The incentives companies use to get you fit

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If you think your job is getting in the way of your fitness goals, then you may want to reconsider your work place. Yep, companies all over the world have started handing out dollars and fitness trackers to keep their employees’ health in-check.

For Vitality, a South African disease and lifestyle program provider, it’s a $25 USD Apple Watch (instead of the usual $350 you’d expect to pay) that is being used as its incentive. But upon signing you’ll have to agree to meet daily exercise goals for two years, or you might have to pay them back the difference.

“We all live busy lives, but the truth is, if doctors could write one prescription for the world, it would be activity,” Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, told ABC News. “The beauty of this program is members are going to get healthier.” Other programs allow you to reedeem points from exercise for gift cards and other rewards.

Then there’s Oscar, a health insurance provider, who has been giving out Misfit fitness trackers since 2014. If their customer hits a daily step goal, they’re rewarded with a dollar. And when they hit $20, they’re given the amount on a Amazon gift card, with a maximum of about $300 a year.

“We want to get people outside and to be physically active,” Oscar co-founder Mario Schlosser told Forbes. “It’s to prevent you from getting sick in the first place — get people to be physically active and push them to do more with financial rewards.”

Fitbit also works with employers such as the Indiana University Health and Emory University in Atlanta to subsidise fitness trackers for their staff. The employees who exercise are eligible for insurance discounts or can win things like a trip to the Caribbean — dream.

With more and more people tied down to their desks each day, we can’t think of a better way to improve health not just in the workplace but as a global change. We really hope this catches on.

 

Source: body and Soul

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