Follow Healthy Habits and Earn Rewards with New Wellness Platform

A new employee wellness program starts Sept. 1 at Cook Children’s with health tips, tracking tools, rewards and other resources that encourage fitness, nutrition and stress relief. 

The Vitality platform ended in June at Cook Children’s. Next month we’re launching the Virgin Pulse Wellness Platform with the opportunity for employees to earn Pulse Cash redeemable for merchandise at the online store or gift cards from retailers including Amazon, Target, Visa, Nike and Starbucks. Virgin Pulse, Inc. operates as a digital health, wellbeing, and engagement company and is part of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, along with Virgin Atlantic Airways. 

The program is designed for personalized engagement and fun challenges that support the health and wellbeing of our employees across the system. The average Virgin Pulse user accesses the app six times a day, according to the company website. 

Information on the app will be tailored to employees based on the topics of interest they select in building their profile.  Education programs include Journeys health courses, unique Daily Cards to complete, and nutrition/sleep guides. Employees can also use Virgin Pulse to create and customize their own competitive challenges with co-workers.

“Virgin Pulse is user friendly, and employees will find the website and app to be intuitive,” said Sarah Fry, coordinator for the Cook Children’s Wellness Program. “Our goal is to simplify wellness for our employees so they will have all of the resources and information they need under one easy-to-use umbrella.”

Sarah pointed out that Virgin Pulse is similar to Vitality because employees will still earn points for completing health tasks such as tracking workouts/steps, meditation and regular dental and primary care visits. Financial wellness counts too; for instance, you can earn 100 Virgin Pulse Points for attending the virtual Fidelity webinar on Sept. 19 (watch for the registration links, coming soon).

Each quarter of the year, employees will have the opportunity earn up to $40 based on accumulated points:

·         Level 1 – 1,000 points earns $5 Pulse Cash

·         Level 2 – 5,000 points earns $10 Pulse Cash

·         Level 3 – 12,000 points earns $10 Pulse Cash

·         Level 5 – 20,000 points earns $15 Pulse Cash

Points will reset every three months, giving a fresh start to new hires and any employee who wasn’t active with the app during the previous quarter.

Employees will be able to sync their fitness device and MyFitnessPal to automatically earn points that go toward their incentive. Devices can be purchased through the Virgin Pulse store, including the Max Buzz activity tracker for $30.

Email instructions will be sent to help employees get started Sept. 1. Our site will be https://join.virginpulse.com/cookchildrens