Healthy workers cash in

More employers encouraging healthy habits, but companies' paternalism raises shadow of Big Brother.

A 36-year-old exercise junkie, Terri Talton looks like a model employee. When off the clock, the senior security specialist at Progress Energy works out at least five days a week and regularly competes in 5-kilometer and 10-kilometer charity races.

Talton's athletic feats would normally go unrecognized by the boss, but in an era of soaring costs for health insurance, employers are increasingly rewarding the office gym rats and organic-food enthusiasts for good health.

Progress Energy, the Raleigh electric utility, in July introduced a wellness program that offers $500 to workers who score high on a health evaluation and don't use tobacco. In joining the ranks of companies that offer financial rewards to employees who count calories and hit the treadmill, Progress Energy expects to cut insurance costs and boost productivity.

"I'm getting paid to do something I do anyway," Talton said. "It doesn't get any better than that."

But such programs also raise concerns about creating a corporate culture that rewards workers for activities that have little to do with their job descriptions.

"The motives are completely suspicious -- it's scapegoating and it's dangerous," said Sandy Schaffer, who is a member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

"If I didn't get the $400 bonus but Joe Schmoe did, but he's a [lousy] worker, do you think I'm going to work hard?" added Schaffer, a New Yorker who weighs more than 250 pounds. "It is a very unfair way of looking at work once you start pulling in things that are not work-related."

Wellness programs can be generous, sometimes covering an employee's insurance premiums and deductibles for the entire year. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina offers $600 to employees simply to take a half-hour health screening and risk assessment and review their score.

Other Triangle employers such as SAS Institute, GlaxoSmithKline and IBM award cash, discounts and prizes for participating in company wellness programs.

Some pay cash and prizes -- not only to employees, but also to dependents and domestic partners -- for dieting and exercising. Businesses are providing complimentary gym memberships and full coverage for smoking cessation programs. Also popular are free consultations with nutritionists, dietitians and other health therapists.

A few employers nationally have gone further, assessing higher premiums to unhealthy workers. At least one business disqualified smokers from employment altogether, a move that recently spawned a discrimination lawsuit in Massachusetts by a smoker who failed a nicotine test and was fired by Scotts LawnService.

As well-intentioned company health policies encroach into employees' private lives, some workplace experts say that wellness programs could feel like Big Brother sending a not-so-subtle message on how employees are expected to behave in their private hours.

"You get this CEO who's a born-again nonsmoker or born-again marathon runner and he thinks that people who aren't in shape just aren't as good, and they get treated differently," said Harvey Schwartz, a Boston lawyer who filed the smoker's discrimination lawsuit, which is pending.

Wary of physical stereotyping

The paternalistic streak behind the wellness initiatives could provide a dangerous scientific rationale for the age-old tendency to judge people by their physical appearance, said Dan Cable, a UNC-Chapel Hill business professor who has studied the link between salary and height.

"We are walking billboards for our firm's values," Cable said. "In today's appearance-conscious society, there's the possibility that overweight employees discredit the company brand. There's all this research out there showing that a firm's image is the most important asset it has."