96% of Millennials say great health and wellness benefits would be the most important factor when choosing between two companies with similar pay and responsibilities (study).

The problem with benefits today is that employees don’t really use them. At Fitnescity, we have seen that employees at large tech firms such as Google and Facebook, as well as those working for a cutting-edge startups, tend to be engaged at the highest level when their fitness efforts are tracked, quantified and optimized.

A tech-enabled fitness challenge (or approach) is a great way to quantify the experience, while adding a gamification aspect.

Here’s our recipe:

1. General Fitness Assessment

Assessments such as advanced body composition analysis, metabolic testing, dietary analysis, aerobic capacity testing and blood biomarker testing can make you stand out as an employer.

For instance, a body composition assessment can make a fitness challenge challenge much more exciting, as it will reward employees much more than a simple weight loss challenge. It is always unclear from the scale whether someone has gained muscle or fat.

Two people with the same weight, height and gender can have completely different fitness profiles and health risks. That’s because body composition (i.e. what you body is made of) matters a lot more than weight. Having your body composition measured can help you determine your fitness level much more accurately. Body composition refers to the proportion of fat and fat-free mass in your body. Body fat is found in muscle tissue, under the skin (subcutaneous fat), or around organs (visceral fat).

2. The Wellness Score: Fitnescity’s signature wellness assessment for a healthy weight loss challenge

The Wellness Score is one of Fitnescity’s signature assessments.

This assessment takes preventative health to a whole new level. It is designed with the goal of helping you become more aware of your own wellness and empowering you to make more informed decisions.

The test is a deep dive into your wellness. It uses an algorithm to score various aspects of your lifestyle, such as your physical activity, sleep, stress, emotional well-being, medical history, nutrition, water and alcohol consumption. The test is based on an extensive (10-15 min) questionnaire and scores all your answers using a proprietary, research-based algorithm. Your answers are scaled from 0 to 100, and each answer has a unique value that is used to calculate your overall score. The good thing is that you can’t really cheat on the test because, unlike other wellness tests or surveys, finding the perfect answer is not that easy. The Wellness Score will require you to answer a lot of open-ended questions along with YES/NO’s, opinion scale and multiple choice questions. There are also a few tricky and unpredictable sections.

Once you complete the assessment, the Wellness Score will provide you with three types of results: an overall wellness score, a deep dive into each category and its score (history, physical activity, sleep, stress, emotions, nutrition, water and alcohol consumption), along with feedback and actionable recommendations on each question.

Moreover, this comprehensive digital assessment helps individuals go beyond weight and body fat numbers, by providing greater context to their test results, and setting healthy fat loss milestones and guidelines.