What We Learned From Using IncentFit Ourselves

We’re a crew that likes to move. Whether we’re spinning, kickboxing, juggling, or swing-dancing, IncentFit’s employees are always staying active.

As fitness enthusiasts ourselves, we’ve helped hundreds of other businesses figure out what their employees really need from a wellness program. Motivation? Incentives? Guidance? Competition?

In order to guide our customers to use their wellness benefits and wellness incentives effectively, we’ve learned a lot from using our own product.

So how does IncentFit use IncentFit?

Going the Extra Mile

The value of wellness is inherent to our company culture (you can see this post to see how to incorporate a wellness program that fits your office culture). But we’re also building a fast-growing startup, which can mean long hours in the office or at a computer.

We use Rewards to make sure our organization stays committed to health even when we’re busy.

Our team is young, healthy, and already quite active, so our plan is designed to be fitness-focused and slightly challenging. You have to work to get the full reward each month.

Our company’s wellness rewards look like:

• $4 for going to the gym
• $1 per mile for walking, after 5 miles per day
• Rewards for running and biking
• Reimbursements for races
• (Click to see a larger image of the benefits plan)

Our offices are based in a busy city, and all of us live, work, and play nearby. We already do plenty of walking just by going about our regular routines, which is why our rewards for walking begin after we’ve logged five miles or 10,000 steps per day.

That’s within reach with some behavior change—say walking to work instead of taking the subway—but still requires some extra physical effort. To get the full amount each month, you’d need to really make fitness a habit: hit the gym 12 times in one month or run a 5k four times a week. Ideally, you’re working to earn small amounts every single day instead of cramming all your exercise in on the weekends.

Aside from walking, the plan includes activities that can be done outside in a city, such as running and biking. An additional race reimbursement perk ($20 up to three times per year) has already inspired some of us to sign up and train for a summer 10k.

Bringing It Together

While Rewards has been an effective way to get into the gym and focus on physical health, there are still other aspects of wellness that are important to nurture. We use Challenges to fill in the gaps.

With Challenges, we’re able to inspire healthy habits outside of a gym. Like setting a regular sleep schedule, drinking more water, or reconsidering nutrition.

But for us, the most rewarding aspect of Challenges has been the camaraderie among the team.

The friendly competition is a fun way to get more activity in each day, but the team connection (and sometimes hilarious inter-office chat) is priceless. Our 100% engagement rate is proof enough.

At the end of a recent “Partners in Fitness” steps challenge, we all collectively walked 1.9 million steps in 30 days!

What We’ve Learned

As our company scales, it’s refreshing to know that our culture will stay intact with wellness at the center.

We know that wellness isn’t one-size-fits-all, and so our benefits are tailored to our specific team and how we live. By using our own product, we’ve experienced the drive of fitness challenges, and the gratitude when your company invests in your life aside from work.

This experience also helps us understand why a plan like this works for our specific team…and why a different plan might be better for other types of companies. That’s how we know how to recommend benefits based on engagement vs. return on investment, or how to fight off “challenge fatigue” with creative ideas that spur action month after month.

Ready to talk about how your company could benefit from wellness? Schedule a quick call with us. Or read other company profiles: