Fitbit looks to improve its corporate wellness connection

Dive Brief:

Wearables in the workplace have been a somewhat controversial but popular trend, and this week Fitbit took its workplace strategy to the next level by launching Fitbit Group Health – a central platform for the company's "corporate wellness partners, weight management leaders, insurers, and clinical researchers."
At the same time, Fitbit launched Wellness Insighter, a metrics service geared to helping corporate wellness proponents and managers benchmark their ROI with industry peer data.
Of all the wearable providers, Fitbit has a strong corporate presence, as in its six-year existence, its corporate wellness offering has been used by over 70 of the Fortune 500, according to the company. Wellness is a notoriously saturated industry.

Dive Insight:

Over the years, Fitbit has partnered with a range of entities across healthcare, including health plans, weight management organizations and academic researchers, so the concept of Fitbit Group Health makes strategic sense. Woody Scal, Fitbit’s chief business officer, calls the launch a "natural evolution for us," given the firm's existing inroads within the corporate wellness category.

Cara McNulty, senior director and head of Population Health & Team Member Wellness at Target Corporation, said Target began its Fitbit partnership last year, offering the company's wearable devices to over 340,000 team members to help increase their activity levels. She adds that with Fitbit playing a key role, Target's wellness program leveraged competition in a company-wide step challenge to motivate team members to move more and live healthier lifestyles.

The Wellness Insighter offering, available to Fitbit Group Health customers in late 2016, was created to give employers a chance to evaluate and optimize program design, according to Fitbit. As many observers of the trend have seen, wellness and wellbeing programs need metrics to prove their value, so this effort from Fitbit could help HR leaders deliver that proof expected from senior management.

For Wellness Insighter, Fitbit is partnering with Ipsos, a market research firm; the idea is HR leaders and others responsible for wellness will gain the ability to easily deploy surveys, collect data and analyze employee feedback.