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It started with companies prodding employees to end their couch-potato ways. Now one of the nation's biggest employers is getting kids in on the action.

For the first time, IBM Corp. is offering $150 cash rewards to employees, who sign their families up for a 12-week lifestyle makeover in the coming year.

Here's the game plan: Kids learn good habits that keep them well, parents are less distracted by family health problems, and IBM enjoys both more-productive employees and reduced medical expenses.

"IBM feels there are gains at many levels," said Dr. Joyce Young, who helps manage wellness programs for the company, which has 128,000 employees in the United States. "When you add it all up, it really does make good business sense to do these things."

A few years ago, IBM was a front-runner in using cash rebates to promote healthy lifestyles among its workers. Since 2004, when it introduced such incentives, IBM has paid out more than $130 million to employees who complete programs aimed at improving diet, revving up physical activity or kicking tobacco.

But targeting the whole family with cash incentives is new.

Jeffrey Jefferson of Cary, N.C., an attorney for IBM, has collected rebates for completing physical-fitness challenges himself during the past two years. He's excited about signing up his wife Kathy and 11-year-old son Pierson for the family program, which kicks off in January.

"The main goal is to make sure Pierson gets out on the right footing with his diet," said Jefferson, who said his son is not overweight but would benefit if the family cut back on fast food and high-fat pizza and Chinese take-out. "That's something he will carry with him throughout his adulthood."

Steve Graybill, a senior health-care consultant in the Charlotte, N.C., office of Mercer, a human-resources firm, said cash-incentive programs typically result in at least three dollars in savings for every dollar a company spends. Such returns have persuaded many companies to begin targeting employees' spouses, offering rewards to husbands and wives who enroll in a program to manage their diabetes, for example.

Employees may still grumble about the company's getting too involved with their personal choices, but employers are pretty much over it, Graybill said. The average annual cost of family health insurance now tops $12,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation; many employers foot well over two-thirds of the bill. "It's hard to say that it's not their business to be involved in trying to change the employees' or the dependents' behavior," Graybill said.

IBM has taken a soft approach to its wellness programs, which are optional.