The “Stickiness” Factor: Why Activity Clubs Succeed Where Health Clubs Fail
Your gym isn’t sticky. That might sound like a good thing, but I’m not referring to a sweat-drenched Cybex.
Gyms aren’t “sticky” in the behavioral sense of the word. They aren’t engaging. They don’t bring most people joy. And that makes it hard to create a habit that sticks. Very few people are thinking fondly about a health club hours after a workout. Everybody knows they should go to the gym, but hardly anybody wants to. In fact, an oft-quoted statistic suggests that 80 percent of people who join a gym at the start of the year, quit by June.
From an individual perspective, an unused gym membership is troubling. Obesity, heart disease and cancer are all on the rise and could all be mitigated by healthier habits.
From the perspective of a health insurance company or employer, unused gym memberships are costly.
Stickiness matters to payors and employers for two main reasons. One, when people stop or never start using a benefit that is good for them, it impairs their ability to drive good behaviors and bring costs down. And the second reason is that when people stop using expensive employee wellness benefits, they stop seeing those programs as “benefits.” Your customers or employees will no longer feel as though you’re doing anything for them — even though they’re the ones who aren’t doing anything!
This lack of stickiness led UnitedHealthcare to drop SilverSneakers free gym membership program late last year because more than 90 percent of policyholders who are eligible for SilverSneakers never stepped foot in a gym or used the benefit.
Instead, the insurer and several others are expanding their offerings of programs that increase physical activity by also encouraging social and mental activity. Healthcare experts are finding that a successful fitness program is one that focuses more on building community than building muscle.
A British Medical Journal study, for example, found that social activities may be as effective as fitness activities in lowering the risk of death. Researchers followed 2,800 seniors for 13 years, finding that social activities “conferred equivalent survival advantages compared to fitness activities.”
“Activities that entail little or no physical exertion may also be beneficial,” the researchers concluded. In other words, playing a board game or knitting and laughing with your friends is as good for your health as running on a treadmill. Once you hear that, what would compel you to step foot in a gym again?
Not much. That’s why insurers are looking beyond the gym for the programs and plans that will keep their costs low and their members living longer and healthier. What I’ve witnessed at Element3 Health is a network of seniors whose care for one another, whose shared passions and compassion have helped people stave off depression, recover from injuries and even find purpose and joy again after the death of a spouse. Your Peloton can’t do that.
As health costs continue to balloon and the nation’s senior population continues to rise, payors are looking for ways to keep people living healthier, longer. As those payors step outside the gym to discover groups and clubs that increase people’s social, physical and mental activity, they just might find something that sticks.
