What HR Needs to Know about Wellness Program Laws
In an article published in HR.com’s Employee Benefits & Wellness Excellence feature, Woods Rogers Principal and management-side employment lawyer King Tower provides guidance to human resources professionals about developing employee wellness programs. While these initiatives promote health and camaraderie in the workplace, they also carry legal challenges that span several areas of compliance.
“With a wide variety of employee wish list items and available programming (hopefully to match), it can be easy to get lost in the details and forget that these programs are subject to a wide array of legal rules and regulations,” King writes. “The wellness plan dynamic that gets the most legal attention is the collection of information from employees and the offering of incentives.”
King explains how employers should structure programs to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the guidelines of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). He also cautions HR leaders to ensure that the collection of data meets the standards set by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
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