12.4: Employee Wellness Programs
A full-time employee spends about a third of their day on the job, five days a week (CDC, 2021). While technological advances can be at least partially credited for making jobs safer, they have also made work more sedentary. Over 80% of modern jobs are mostly sedentary, which combined with other factors such as mental stress and the availability of high calorie foods has contributed to the rise in noncommunicable diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This has prompted calls to update the OSH Act to include lifestyle factors such as a lack of physical activity and access to healthy foods in the workplace as health hazards (Duffy et al., 2021). Workplaces represent a significant opportunity to promote healthy behaviors for a good portion of a worker’s day. And maintaining a healthy workforce benefits the company through improved morale and productivity, fewer sick days, and potentially reduced healthcare costs and worker’s compensation claims (CDC, 2021).
According to a study done by the Rand Corporation in 2013, wellness programs were offered by about 50% of U.S. employers, and larger companies were more likely to offer comprehensive wellness programs. These programs often include health screening or health risk assessments, as well as interventions such as fitness, nutrition, smoking cessation, health education, and stress-management programs (Mattke et al., 2013). The Affordable Care Act included grants to help small businesses begin offering wellness programs (Shi & Singh, 2017). Over the last decade these programs have grown in popularity. As of 2021, 58% of small companies and 83% of large companies offered some sort of wellness program to their employees (Vankar, 2022). Corporate wellness as a global industry was valued at $53 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow over 4% annually through 2030, in spite of a short decline during the COVID-19 pandemic (Grand View Research, 2022).
Research regarding the efficacy of workplace wellness programs is still mixed, and depends highly on the type of program delivered and the metrics used to measure success of the program (Horn et al., 2020). Employee wellness programs might be as limited as offering a discount on gym memberships, or annual health screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose, or they might be as comprehensive as offering on-site health education classes, fitness classes, stress management sessions, and support groups or behavioral coaching. Some companies may use the physical work environment to promote physical activity by providing standing or walking desks, or providing healthy meals in cafeterias and healthy snacks in vending machines. Still others create policies and stimulate a work culture of health; employees may have more flexible work hours or locations, managers might conduct “walking meetings” or the company might host competitions encouraging employees to get more daily steps or lose weight (Mattke et al., 2013, Horn et al., 2020). Because of the wide variety of programs offered at different companies, and varying levels of employee engagement (not all employees may participate, and often those already focused on their health do), it can be difficult to determine the best practices for worksite wellness programs in general. However, a few reviews suggest that well-designed and implemented workplace wellness programs have the potential to:
- Increase productivity (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023),
- Decrease absenteeism (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023),
- Improve cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness, and decrease musculoskeletal symptoms (fatigue, postural control, etc.) (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023)
- Improve health metrics such as body mass index (BMI) (Mattke et al., 2013, Peñalvo et al., 2021), body composition blood pressure, blood cholesterol (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023, Peñalvo et al., 2021), and blood glucose (Peñalvo et al., 2021),
- Increase the amount of physical activity that employees perform throughout the week (Mattke et al., 2013, Marin-Farrona et al., 2023),
- Improve some nutritional habits, such as eating more fruits and vegetables and less fat (Peñalvo et al., 2021),
- Reduce smoking behaviors (Mattke et al., 2013),
- Improve employee’s perceptions of their own health (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023),
- Reduce work-related stress (Marin-Farrona et al., 2023),
- Reduce healthcare costs and provide a monetary return on investment to the employer in some studies (Astrella, 2017, Baicker et al., 2010, Lerner et al., 2013, Mattke et al., 2013).
It is possible that the full benefits of workplace wellness programs will not be realized for several decades. The noncommunicable diseases that most wellness programs aim to prevent are also chronic - they take several decades to develop. The lifestyle behaviors that improve health and prevent diseases may then need to be consistently practiced for many years in order to achieve the goal of disease prevention and healthcare cost savings (Astrella, 2017).