However, there is strong evidence that proper incentives drive participation rates, keep employees engaged and motivated to begin efforts to achieve self-determined health goals. The challenge is to migrate employees from simply participating for a reward external incentive to a place where the new behavior or habit is sufficiently satisfying and worth maintaining internal incentive , such as taking a walk daily while listening to music or a favorite podcast.
At NextJump , teams participate in a weekly Fitness Challenge where virtual cash rewards for the winning teams are coupled with bragging rights, creating camaraderie and social cohesion among workers. The company has found that motivating employees to fit in a workout during the workday gives them more productive energy and is helping drive better performance. Employees feel good, are happier, establish close partnerships with their office mates, and at the end of the day find work fun and personally rewarding.
Measuring the right things. Program evaluation is critical to maintaining accountability for a wellness program. To do this well, develop an evaluation plan at the start of a program so that useful baseline data collection can occur and be monitored over time.
So what should you measure? ROI in this context is generally limited to examining the tangible benefits of a program, such as a reduction in medical costs or absenteeism. Fortunately, a robust scientific literature review supports the conclusion that well-designed and well-executed programs can produce a positive ROI along with significant improvements in population health.
In our view, ROI in isolation fails to capture the full benefit of workplace health promotion. VOI calculations, on the other hand, allow employers to examine the broader impact of programs and their impact on core priorities for their organization, which may include improved employee morale, talent attraction and retention, enhanced company loyalty and heightened customer loyalty.
There are a lot of misconceptions about wellness programs out there. As a result, many leaders pick and choose options fairly blindly, doing their employees and their company a disservice. To achieve very real health improvement at the workplace, employers should first understand what the evidence says about what works , and then weave together individual health promotion programs with organizational change interventions that build on and support a healthy company culture.
But the rewards can be huge, both for your company and for your employees for years to come. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Human resource management. Read more on Human resource management or related topics Organizational culture and Health and behavioral science.
Hector De La Torre is the executive director of the Transamerica Center for Health Studies , a national nonprofit, private foundation and division of the Transamerica Institute. They would prefer to make and sell products, provide services, deliver the goods and services that they are designed to produce.
Yet worksites are doing more disease prevention and wellness than any other entity in society today. They are more consistent about it and they are more effective than anybody else.
And they do all this because they enjoy the benefits that come from having an active healthy workforce. Worksites all across the world are implementing employee wellness programs because they like the benefits of wellness. Think of the different benefits employers typically offer. These could include a retirement or pension plan, healthcare, paid time off, or maternity leave. These are designed to help your organization recruit and maintain qualified employees.
We do them because we believe they are important. These things are actually very hard to study and we have a feeling or sense that they do make a difference in our ability to attract good workers. But, there is no science to back any of this up. Now consider your wellness program. Unlike all the other benefits your worksite offers, wellness programs have been studied for decades. There are hundreds and hundreds of rigorous scientific evaluations of the impact of wellness programs which provides a great outlook on reasons to have a wellness program.
There is more research on the impact of wellness programs than anything else your company does. The research is not perfect—there is no such thing as a perfect study. But after decades of scientists evaluating programs, we have an enormous amount of very solid data that show the benefits of having a wellness program. We now have the benefit of years of published research on the impact of worksite wellness programs. It is this information that be used to back up the 7 most popular reasons to have a wellness program.
The core of every good wellness program is behavior change. Wellness programs are good at helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having or reasons to have a wellness program. Healthy behaviors lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease. With less chronic disease employees have fewer health care costs. It looks like this:. Many studies have evaluated the ability of wellness programs to improve health behaviors.
Not every wellness program is able to show positive results. The ones that are well-organized and follow effective behavior change models show the best results. Here are the results of a recently published evaluation. The 1, employees at this worksite reported their health behaviors at baseline, one year, and two years after the program began. Source: Population Health Management article. Just about anybody can have healthy behaviors for a few days or weeks.
The key is to maintain healthy behaviors for years. As soon as you stop having healthy behaviors you stop getting the benefits. I like studies that go out for two years because the results are pretty conclusive by that time. If you can get your employees to participate in a good wellness program chances are they will adopt and maintain healthy behaviors for years to come. Most wellness studies show the employees have better health behaviors.
Wellness programs can also help alleviate depression and the symptoms of depression as well as improve life satisfaction. Even the American Heart Association has completed an extensive review of the ability of wellness programs to improve health and reduce cardiovascular risk.
Others have evaluated all of the research and reported that wellness programs, do in fact, have the ability to improve employee health. In researchers completed one of the most rigorous and comprehensive reviews of wellness programs. This study is called the Rand Report.
Here is what the authors concluded:. We find that workplace wellness programs can help contain the current epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases, the main driver of premature morbidity and mortality as well as health care cost in the United States. The foundation of any good wellness program must be focused on helping employees adopt healthy behaviors.
Elevated blood glucose, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure are almost all caused by unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity. Eating and exercising are behaviors. A randomized clinical trial was designed to help people improve their nutrition and physical activity. When researchers looked at the results, they were stunned to learn that in as little as six weeks health risks could improve dramatically.
Those who maintained healthy behaviors experience lower health risks for six weeks, six months, 12 months, and even out to 18 months after this program began. When you change your diet, get active, and avoid tobacco, really good things happen. Boise School District is a WellSteps client and not long ago we published the results of their changes in health risks. After one year, a lot of employees who had elevated health risks at baseline, had reached healthy risk levels.
Source: JOEM. Reductions in elevated health risks are important. Low health risks are the foundation of good health, and wellness programs are a great way to help employees and their spouses avoid elevated health risks. There are hundreds of research papers that evaluated the ability of wellness programs to reduce elevated health risks.
One particular study looking at almost , wellness participants and showed that 5 0f 7 health risks improved after one year. Another researcher looked at all of the published studies to get a consensus. This review showed that comprehensive wellness programs will have a significant impact on elevated health risks.
There is one weakness that almost all wellness programs have. After 30 years of evaluating dozens and dozens of programs it has become clear that it is difficult to impossible to get large groups of employees to reach and maintain a healthy body weight.
The obesity epidemic is caused by a variety of cultural factors and helping employees lose weight has proven to be exceptionally difficult. While the research suggests that helping people improve blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose is possible, helping people lose weight and keep the weight off has proven to be hard to do. Just take a look at the body mass index BMI data in the table above. Those who are obese do lose some weight after a few years but not very much.
There is some hope. Not everyone can provide their team members with a 72, square foot fitness centre, but Chesapeake Energy considers it a completely justified expense for recruiting and retaining healthy team members. The fitness centre offers team members an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a rock climbing wall, and access to personal trainers. The fitness centre is just one part of the company's 'Living Well' program, which offers cash incentives for team members who participate and meet their goals in various areas of the program.
Chesapeake Energy clearly cares about their team members' well-being and has provided them with as much support as possible to help them reach their goals.
It's no secret that, on average, team members who smoke cigarettes cost their employers more money due to health issues compared to non-smokers. Some workplaces have found it in their best interest, both ethically and economically, to offer smoking cessation programs to their team members. Union Pacific offers a smoking cessation program that consists of lifestyle coaching, as well as pharmacological assistance, to their team members.
Union Pacific understands that pharmaceuticals alone may not work for all team members. The addition of coaching for team members trying to quit smoking may make the difference between success and failure. Encouraging alternative methods of transportation, such as bike sharing or public transit incentives, are beneficial to the workplace and the future of the environment.
Facebook's campus in Palo Alto offers a bike-sharing program for team members to cycle to places around campus rather than driving. At Rise, we encourage our team members to take public transportation by reimbursing employees for their transit passes. These types of workplace wellness programs appeal to current and potential employees who value environmental responsibility. Google offers paramedical services, like massage therapy, to their team members while they're at work. In fact, Google employs a massage program manager, as just one of 35 massage therapists employed in their United States offices.
Massage therapists go through an interview process at the company as well, where they demonstrate their skills which sounds great for the interviewer. There's a reason why Google is consistently rated one of the best workplaces in the world. Going above and beyond what team members expect from their employer is a great way to encourage a reciprocal effort.
A relaxed and calm team member is a joy to have in the workplace, which is likely the main reason that Google offers the service. Mobify offers their team members yoga classes twice per week, which, weather permitting, is moved to their rooftop boasting stunning views of Vancouver's ocean and mountains. The most important requirement for practising yoga is the space to do it, and many companies are using their conference or break rooms to provide yoga classes for team members throughout the workday.
Yoga and meditation is an extremely effective stress reliever. Team members at startups or PR agencies often have to deal with tight deadlines and overtime. Yoga is an effective way to incorporate self-care into work, so that team members don't have to feel guilty about neglecting work. With only 30 minutes for lunch, many team members may feel that they have to eat fast food when buying their lunch.
0コメント