A Rose Among The Thorns


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A Rose Among The Thorns
By: Steve Slagle, CAE, PPAI President/CEO
Issue: 2009aug

You’ve heard a lot from us lately about legislation and regulations that we think are bad for our industry. Consider S. 301, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which we believe has some really harmful provisions. Or the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, a law passed in 2008 that has some very onerous requirements and deadlines related to product safety that our members will find hard to meet. To learn why, just visit www.ppailaw.org or www.ppai.org/Member/productsafety.aspx.

But we’re happy to share some good news about legislation that we can support, not oppose. Consider the Healthy Workforce Act of 2009, with companion bills in Congress as S. 803 and H.R. 1897. This is legislation we can really get behind for multiple reasons.

The legislation advocates for healthy employees, gives a tax credit to employers who implement wellness programs for their employees and creates an opportunity for our industry’s products to be used as they have for years to support safety and wellness programs for any number of businesses. What’s not to like?

Here’s how the tax credit works. An employer can get a 50-percent tax credit for the costs of providing employees with a qualified wellness program up to $200 for the first 200 employees and $100 for each employee thereafter. So for a large company with 1,000 employees with a wellness program costing $100,000, the company could gain a tax credit for half the costs, or $50,000. It’s a pretty good deal for a company wanting to have a healthy workforce that translates to higher productivity, fewer employee absences and lower healthcare insurance premiums.

Here’s where you come in. This Healthy Workforce Act omits a vital element in motivation and recognition of employee behavior. As currently written, it does not provide any separate incentives for employees to participate in these types of programs. In order to motivate them to voluntarily participate in a wellness program, employers should offer incentives to join the program and recognition and awards when employees reach significant plateaus and meet goals or targets. Get the picture?

Incentives and recognition would be most beneficial if they also conferred a tax benefit. Namely, we contend that qualified wellness awards, up to $400 per recipient, given to eligible employees who participate in a qualified wellness program should be nontaxable to the employee and tax deductible by the employer. That’s the model used for safety programs and it should be adopted for wellness programs.

Wellness awards would thus motivate employees to participate in an employer’s wellness program by giving them an incentive for doing so. As many companies have discovered, such awards and incentives have a long and proven track record of influencing good employee behavior and would be a powerful tool in ensuring the success of the wellness programs championed by the Act. Our industry has a wealth of case studies showing how wellness programs operate and how promotional products make them successful.

To ensure that such awards are not disguised compensation, the awards should be in the form of tangible personal property and not cash or cash equivalents. Tangible awards, meaning promotional products, have the added benefit of having “trophy” value by serving as a continuous reminder of an employee’s achievement in the area of health and wellness. Appropriately designed wellness awards have long served as valuable tools to ensure the success of an employer’s wellness program.

If the legislation can be amended to include the additional provisions for wellness awards, we could see a recovery of some of the business lost last year and in 2009 due to the PhRMA Code and the nasty economy. It’s an opportunity at least and one that we hope all of you will support.

Please go to www.ppailaw.org and send a message to your elected representatives and urge them to amend and pass this legislation this year.

It’s as important to support the things that help as it is to oppose the things that harm.

Comments (1)

8/20/2009
MAx Fabry (maxfabry@onlinewellnessassociation.com)
company: Online Wellness Association.com
title: President
"I am in full support of HR 1897 as it is written. I have a little problem with S. 803: "...to provide a tax credit to employers for the costs of implementing wellness programs, and for other purposes" "..and for other purposes" is just too open for me. Reading your article I get an idea that it is about rewards and incentives--not monetary. But, these four words leaves it wide open for corporate abuse. I will continue to lobby for HR 1897 and ask members of OWA to consider supporting it. MAx Fabry"

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