The intention of IBM’s Wellness for Life program strategy is to create a culture of health that fosters long-term commitment to healthy lifestyles and reduces health risks among its 120,000 active employees. The comprehensive approach includes interventions for major risk areas such
as, physical activity, weight management, nutrition, tobacco cessation, stress management, and clinical preventive care. Healthcare demand reduction is driven by a focus on smart healthcare consumerism along with the health risk mitigation. IBM’s efforts align with many of the Healthy
People 2010 objectives in the workplace.

To encourage employees to use wellness programs and facilitate long-term adoption of healthy behaviors, IBM provides employee incentives for participation through its Healthy Living Rebate programs. IBM has awarded more than 600,000 rebates for engagement in Preventive Care, Physical Activity-Nutrition, Children’s Health, and Smoking Cessation programs.

A dedicated annual budget for wellness programming supports a staff that includes preventive medicine physicians, certified fitness and public health professionals, and skilled program managers who design and implement IBM’s wellness strategy. External experts are also engaged to enhance program design excellence, and include Dr. James Prochaska, Dr. Dee Edington, MediFit Corporate Services, SparkPeople, Weight Watchers, and Quitnet.
Strategic use of technology and creative approaches to program delivery and communications are key in impacting IBM’s increasingly dispersed employee population. A web-based platform is the locus for employee engagement in health improvement, providing access to flexible, behavior-based programming that accomplishes the following:

• helps employees determine their readiness for specific lifestyle changes (based on Prochaska’s research on stages of change and behavior change techniques),
• promotes resources to take action toward health goals based on individual stage of change,
• provides access to online communities and teams that provide social support, and
• allows users to monitor and evaluate progress against their personal wellness vision.