Corporate wellness plans are expanding as more companies add incentives, such as gift cards for voluntary health screenings, or impose penalties, such as higher insurance premiums for smokers.

But some experts suggest that the wellness wave may be driven by marketing and insurance requirements as much as by actual evidence of any consistent return on investment.

Dr. Vivian Ho, who holds the James A. Baker III Institute chair in health economics at Rice University, reviewed the published studies on the costs and benefits of such programs and found little basis for wellness working.

“The quality of the studies was uniformly weak,” she said. “Only the healthiest workers in these programs participate for a significant amount of time.”

Still, the perceived value of wellness programs remains high, said Keith Wolf, managing director of Houston-based Murray Resources, a recruiting and staffing firm, .

“With the talent market as competitive as it is, we’re finding that more companies are offering wellness programs as part of their benefit packages,” he said. “From gym memberships to health screenings and immunizations, companies are recognizing that having healthier and more productive employees typically outweighs the costs of such programs. We’re not seeing specific differences between industries.”

Even though most employers believe in such programs, Wolf said their value in attracting new hires remains questionable.

“For our candidates, what we’re seeing is that companies often overestimate the value of wellness programs as a recruiting tool,” he said. “For example, a gym membership is a nice-to-have perk, but candidates are typically more interested in a position’s career impact, duties, salary and core benefits. That said, one trend that we are seeing is the increase in group wellness competitions. Companies are ‘gamifying’ wellness to make it fun. This not only helps build a strong company culture, but the peer pressure tends to help them stick to their goals.”

Click here to read the full article.