How to Design a Rewarding Employee Wellbeing Program

In this blog post series, we’ll share the key elements of designing reward practices that ensure success. The first part focuses on general tips, while the second and third part offers concrete examples of how to reward employees in two of HeiaHeia’s popular challenges, Fitness Pass and Around the World. You can apply these tips even if you’re not using HeiaHeia for your program.

Part 1 - Three Key Elements Almost Every Employer Considers When Designing Wellbeing Program Rewarding:

1. Goal of Rewarding – Who is the main target group you are trying to motivate with the reward?
2. How to Link Rewards to Your Program Design – How can the rewards best synergize with your program?
3. The Rewards – What is the right budget, and how strategically important is wellbeing for your organization?

How Employees Become Eligible for Rewards Matters

The way you determine eligibility for rewards sends a message. Are you aiming to motivate those who are already active and taking care of their wellbeing, or are you focused on encouraging those who need the most support? We’ve seen the best results when the focus is on motivating everyone, regardless of their starting level, while still recognizing highly active individuals. The good news is, you can design rewards that motivate both groups.

Examples of Reward Practices That Motivate Everyone, Regardless of Starting Level:

• Reaching Meaningful Goals – For example, meeting WHO exercise recommendations or HeiaHeia wellbeing levels.
• Achieving Goals with Team Members – Completing a challenge as a team.
• Participation Rewards – Rewards for simply joining the challenge.

Examples of Reward Practices That Motivate Competitive/Active People:

• Top Performer Rewards – For example, the top 3 teams or individuals with the most exercise minutes, steps, or wellbeing points.

Linking Rewards to Your WellBeing Program Design

The best wellbeing programs aren’t short-term projects. At HeiaHeia, we’ve discovered two surefire ways to maintain organization-wide engagement in wellbeing programs.

1. Annual Organization-Wide Challenges – Typically team-focused challenges that run once a year.
2. Ongoing Personal Wellbeing Targets – Programs where employees are challenged to meet meaningful well-being targets on an ongoing basis, such as the WHO’s exercise recommendations.

For example, CGI rewards employees with prizes based on points accumulated during their well-being program. You can read more about these two successful designs in our popular blog post series, Two Surefire Ways to Promote Employee Wellbeing, part 1 and part 2.

If you run a program where employees are rewarded for reaching personal wellbeing targets, it’s a good idea to create ongoing reward concepts, such as earning paid leave for meeting annual targets. If you’re organizing annual team challenges, focus on rewards for the challenge duration (typically 8–12 weeks). For example, you could reward teams that meet their challenge goals with a budget for a team wellness evening, or link the organization’s progress to a charity donation.

One successful example is how OP Tampere (part of OP financial group) managed to engage 96% of their employees in a well-being program by linking rewards to charity donations.

Designing Your Prizes

Start by determining your budget, but don’t let a limited budget discourage you. While expensive rewards can enhance engagement, we’ve also seen great success with low-budget reward systems. On the other hand, some CEOs and management teams believe that well-being rewards should reflect a significant investment to emphasize the company’s commitment to employee health. In many cases, higher-value rewards send a strong signal that wellbeing is a vital part of the company culture.

Here Are 5 Popular Examples of Rewards That Work Well:

1. Charity Donations – For example, donate a sum based on the total exercise minutes collected.
2. Wellbeing Budgets for Teams – Complete the challenge as a team to earn €500 for a team wellness day.
3. Extra Paid Leave – Collect all 12 stamps in the HeiaHeia Fitness Pass to earn an additional paid day off.
4. Wearables (e.g., Polar, Garmin Devices) – All individuals who complete the challenge are entered into a raffle to win a fitness device.
5. Small Wellbeing-Related Items (e.g., €30 or €60 per item) – Hiking gear, yoga mats, or other wellbeing-related items. In selected markets, HeiaHeia has partnered with leading providers to offer hassle-free, tax-compliant rewarding as a service. Ask your HeiaHeia contact person for more details.

We hope this helps you on your journey to implementing a wellbeing program that motivates employees to better health. Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog post (coming soon), where we’ll dive deeper into concrete examples. If you’d like to discuss your plans further, our experts are available to help—just reach out to our sales via the contact form on our website.