A growing number of workplace programs are borrowing techniques from digital games in an effort to encourage regular exercise and foster healthy eating habits. The idea is that competitive drive—sparked by online leader boards, peer pressure, digital rewards and real-world prizes—can get people to improve their overall health.
ShapeUp, has a Facebook-like platform, where people invite “friends” to participate, create “teams,” and can log their own fitness and weight control efforts and see how they’re doing compared to others in their company.
According to ShapeUp’s employer wellness survey, self-insured companies have implemented employee wellness programs to control rising health care costs and address major health issues like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. But they increasingly do not find value in health risk assessments.
Telecom giant Sprint estimates it saved approximately $1.1 million through a social media wellness challenge it launched last summer. Fourteen thousand of the company’s 40,000 United States employees participated in the 12-week challenge, which ran on a social media platform powered by ShapeUp.
Shape-Up employs close to 60 and is hiring more systems administrators and code writers. Meanwhile, Kumar is traveling the country to add more big-name clients to a roster that already includes Hewlett-Packard, CVS Caremark, Sprint, Raytheon, Key Bank, Aetna and Kraft Foods.
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