Workplace wellness programmes ‘do little to improve health’

Sam Meadows

WORKPLACE wellness programmes have little if any impact on the health or weight of staff, a study has found.

However, employees who had access to such a programme did report that they felt healthier and were more likely to have visited a healthcare professional, according to US researchers at the Gies College of Business, in Illinois.

Such programmes, which typically include access to exercise sessions or health check-ups, are increasing in popularity in the UK with 45 per cent of companies now offering some form of wellness programme, according to Elevate, a service provider.

The two-year study assessed the weight, blood pressure, cholesterol or blood glucose, rates of medical diagnoses and use of healthcare services of almost 5,000 employees.

Companies that have tried to introduce workplace exercise classes still have no real effect on employees’ physical health, the paper found.

David Molitor, professor of finances at the college, said: “Many employers use workplace wellness programmes to improve employee health and re- duce medical costs, but randomised evaluations of their efficacy are rare.

“Our randomised evaluation found no significant effect of the programme on employee health measures or medical use.”

The researchers studied a workplace wellness programme offered to em- ployees at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois called ithrive.

It was designed to replicate a typical corporate wellness programme offered by companies in the US and included on-site biometric screenings, an online health risk assessment and a choice of wellness activities.

The 4,800 employees were randomly assigned to a group eligible to receive the benefits for two years or a control group which did not. Participants were subjected to a medical exam after one and two years and regular questionnaires on their “health beliefs”.

They were also given paid annual leave to attend wellness activities, for example campus walks over lunch breaks, programmes designed to help them give up smoking and chronic disease self-management programmes.

The initiative increased the proportion of employees that had visited a doctor and improved individuals’ beliefs about their health, the authors of the study said. However, the researchers found little evidence that actual physical health improved.

Prof Moliter said: “We found no significant effect of the program on employee health measures or medical use, demonstrating a mismatch between employee perceptions of workplace wellness programs and an actual improvement in health.

“These findings shed light on employees’ perceptions of workplace wellness programmes, which may influence long-run effects on health.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.