Paying Employees to Lose Weight Works, Study Suggests

Doctors have tried cajoling you to do it for your health. 

Food companies have put out special brands designed to take off calories.

Gyms have beckoned you with discounted offers if you’ll only join up now.

And diet book authors have insisted they have the only answer.

All these incentives and more have been exercised on those looking to control their weight. And if you’re like most of us, they almost never work for long.

With the exception of a TV reality show or two, no one’s ever actually offered you money to lose weight. But what if your boss did? New research suggests giving employees a tangible monetary reward can actually inspire them to shed those excess pounds and keep them off.

The experiment, conducted by the University of North Carolina, took 200 overweight workers from various college campuses around that state and divided them into three separate groups. One was asked to lose weight without any compensation. The other two were offered $7 and $14 respectively for every percentage point of pounds shed. That means someone losing 10 pounds from a 200 lbs. frame would earn $35. There were no instructions given to any of the groups about how to go about their task.

But the results were startling. Those asked to take it off and get nothing for it managed to lose two pounds. The $7 bunch got rid of three. And the higher paid $14 members peeled an average of five pounds of flab from their frames, and were five times more likely to lose at least five per cent of their weight, which the study authors suggest is more than a coincidence.

The results of a follow-up study involving some 1,000 volunteers, with a weight-loss program and changes in the office environment thrown in for test measures, are still being studied. But those behind the data suggest paying mostly healthy people to lose weight seems to actually work better than anything else, although the actual perfect dollar amount that most motivates them has yet to be determined.

The researchers suggest it’s an option some companies may want to look at, as they study ways to cut their own kind of fat – namely, health care costs and absenteeism. Many firms provide workout areas or lower calorie snacks in their cafeterias, but the evidence suggests it may be money that really feeds the ultimate success. “They really can’t be a bad investment because you don’t pay people unless they lose weight,” points out lead author Eric Finkelstein, who calls himself a “health economist.”

Does it really work? It did for Vonderahe Rivera. She toils for a sandpaper manufacturer in Missouri. When her company offered her cash and an extra day off a year for losing weight – and keeping it off – she jumped at the chance. Five years later, she’s dropped 25 pounds, is $125 richer and is enjoying her leisure time. “The money is great and the day off is great,” the 51-year-old notes.

But not everyone’s jumping on the avoir dupois banned-wagon. Some are worried about employees simply losing the same weight and gaining it back, defeating the purpose and costing companies money in the long run. “I think over time companies will start looking for something with a little more teeth,” suggests LuAnn Heinen of the National Business Group on Health in the U.S.

Which is O.K., as long as those teeth aren’t munching on a doughnut during office hours.