Food and IBM

[Tyndmyr]

So, IBM patented a way to pay you based on the food you eat (http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/28/1313224/ibm-granted-your-paychecks-are-what-you-eat-patent). This struck me as an interesting scenario that I hadn't previously thought about, and I wondered...would you go work for a place that substantially changed your pay based on how you ate? And what would be the possible social effects of this...would a birthday cake near the end of the month be viewed with dread?

[H Birchgrove]

Must... not... adress... Godwin's... law... :smallannoyed:

[LaZodiac]

There is a large difference in wanting your employies to be healthy, and the insanity that is this. I do not approve, IBM. What if they don't eat during work? Amoung other questions, of course, but that's what came to mind first.

[Spiryt]

Lol, all that stuff written in this note can be just shortened to " Catastrophic idea"

This cannot end well.

[Erloas]

I think you guys are reading way too much into the rather short and vague story.
Its not like your going to be making $60k a year if you eat great and $30k a year if you eat fast food all the time. The difference is likely going to be less then how much ever is being paid in medical insurance premiums. And for me, being single, thats less then $100 a month, not even 3% of my take home pay.
Because that is the whole point of the idea, to get people to eat healthier so the company can get better rates on their insurance premiums. It would make no sense at all, from a business perspective, to pay someone $400 a month more for eating well if they are only saving $200 a month in insurance costs. Insurance costs, especially for a large company like IBM, is huge though, and even small decreases per person in their insurance rates will make a big difference in the end, and every incentive program a company can put into place to show insurers that its trying to encourage and keep its employees in good health is going to save them money in the long run.

My guess would be that the incentives for eating well (*not* penalties for eating poorly) is going to be less then 5% of their pay, 1-2% seems more likely.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, it appears to be all food, based on the "personal food monitoring system" outlined in the system diagram. Their example incentives had vegetables worth three times as much as meat, but who knows what this would translate to in dollars in a finished system?

Honestly, even having 5% of my pay determined by a variable system would be a notable downside for me. I mean, a 5% pay raise is generally pretty decent, right? Losing the same(possibly) is still a notable downside.

And, frankly, for such a system to work, the incentives have to be at a level where they have some impact. If it's so little that the worker can easily shrug and ignore the whole thing, then it's not much of a motivator. I'm not sure what percentage would make it a good motivator, but I suspect that any level that provides good motivation would also make many people uncomfortable.

Personally, I'm more worried about the accuracy of the incentive system. For example, I eat a ton of protein. I don't worry at all about it being lean. Why? It's kind of necessary to support muscle building/maint if you work out lots. A few extra calories in that is basically irrelevant. The same diet that's fairly decent for me is probably not the ideal diet for the fairly inactive guy doing the exact same job.