Cassia Soldano says she hit rock bottom after her second child was born in 2012 and her weight climbed to 320 pounds. She knew she needed to do something about it.
"As soon as I had my son, it hit me. I had to make a change," says the 37-year-old public affairs professional from Canoga Park. "I felt I owed it to my children."
So she turned to her employer for help.
There, she found a host of wellness programs to help her get physically active, reduce stress and learn about healthful eating habits. Soldano says she now spends her lunchtime and other work breaks taking walks — about 45 minutes in total on most days.
Increasingly, workers are finding health-related programs available through work, and they're not just incentives to exercise more. Many employers are also starting to penalize employees who smoke or who are overweight.
Chronic "lifestyle diseases" such as diabetes and heart disease are on the rise. And unhealthful habits such as smoking, lack of exercise, excessive alcohol consumption and poor nutrition are widely seen as major contributors. These illnesses often lead to higher healthcare costs for employers, and can even lower employee productivity.
That's one reason programs to help people lose weight, stop smoking and better manage chronic illnesses are so popular these days.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, more than 90% of employers with 200 or more workers have some type of health promotion or disease-prevention program in place.
With more Americans being nudged to take charge of their health, experts offer insights about wellness programs, how they operate and consumers' rights to opt out.
Find out what's available. Want to lose weight, reduce your blood pressure, stop smoking? There's probably help at work.
Companies are increasingly offering exercise areas at work, anti-stress seminars, discounted gym memberships, smoking cessation programs, diabetes counseling and even free wristbands to track your daily physical activity.
Expect more pressure to get involved. Once, you might have received a reward for simply participating in wellness programs — say, by filling out a health risk assessment.
Today, more employers are requiring workers to show they've actually made progress toward weight-loss goals or efforts to lower blood pressure.
According to a recent survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, about 1 in 5 employers are tying rewards and penalties to the achievement of certain goals, such as weight loss or cholesterol management.
The survey found that 42% of companies say they reward or penalize employees based on tobacco use. And that number is expected to climb to 58% by 2015.
In some cases, companies are charging smokers more for health insurance. These insurance surcharges average about $520 a year, according to the survey.
