Rewards and Incentives
Awarding members for their participation greatly increases their engagement in your program! To encourage participation without creating too much pressure, keep prizes small but desirable. Avoid using large sums of money or high-priced items as prizes.
Note: If you are interested in connecting your Wellness program to Terryberry's Rewards and Redemption, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information!
Determining the Criteria:
Our recommended best practice is to enter all members who participate, or reach a minimum step goal, into a random drawing at the end of the challenge. This ensures that all members feel included (even if they are just getting started on their wellness journey), leads to a sense of community and equity among all participants, and motivates these members to keep trying and pushing themselves in future challenges even if they didn't reach or surpass the current challenge's step goal.
We advise against regularly rewarding the member with the highest step count or first to finish, as these are often the same people. We want to ensure that everyone who participated has an opportunity to "win", even if they aren’t able to secure a high place on the leaderboard. After all, wellness isn't about living up to someone else's standards, but to reflect on your own practices and make small, incremental changes in your behaviors and habits.
Our reporting can be a basis for your challenge incentive criteria. Reference the following PDFs for ideas on how to reward members outside of the highest stepper/ first to finish. These PDFs also list which report and column to reference:
Individual Side Challenge Ideas
The Prizes:
We understand that budgets vary extensively, so we have suggestions for every price range! Check them out below:
Snacks
Provide healthy snacks in your office and let the person who wins the incentive pick their favorite from a list of options.
Gift Cards
Gift cards to major retailers are always a nice incentive but be careful not to go too high. A $25 gift card to a healthy eating subscription or wellness store is a nice bonus but doesn't feel like a serious loss if you don't win. Going higher than $25 can lead to people feeling highly dissatisfied if they don't win or may encourage dishonest step entries.
Note: If you work with a health plan, please check with your contact regarding any restrictions related to gift cards.
Low-Cost Options for Incentives
- Award winners with a “Certificate of Achievement” and praise them in an organization-wide blast.
- Here are some samples: Certificate 1, Certificate 2, Certificate 3
- Award winners with a trip to coffee or tea with their lead, manager or company CEO – whichever you think would feel the most rewarding to your participants.
- Award winners with extra vacation hours or a day off.
- Give winners hand-written congratulations signed by members of the executive team and/or HR team.
- Create a "Golden Shoe" or a trophy that someone can put in their work space.