IT'S HR, JAKE:

[A]ccording to a rigorous new study it also might be a massive waste of money. Researchers randomly assigned employees at dozens of BJ's Wholesale Club stores to either participate in the company's wellness program or not and then tracked them for three years. They found wellness programs were pretty much worthless, the study authors, the University of Chicago's Katherine Baicker and Harvard's Zirui Song, reported in recent a Washington Post op-ed. 

First, what exactly did the study find? While those who were assigned to participate in the programs showed a modest uptick in self-reported healthy behaviors -- the number of employees who said they exercised improved by 11 percent, for instance -- when the researchers measured hard-and-fast outcomes like obesity rates and blood pressure, they saw no difference between those who enrolled and those who didn't. 

And how about healthcare costs? After all, one of the big motivations for employers for introducing these programs is saving money on employees' health insurance. Here, again, the wellness programs disappointed. The researchers found no difference between costs for the two groups. Nor did they find any evidence that job performance went up for those enrolled in the wellness program. 

Tweet   @brothersjudd