Do employee wellness programs really work

Ignorance not only perpetuates a broader societal stigma about mental health, it also creates a culture in which leaders and employees feel ill-equipped to support, and even identify, emotional distress. Structurally, flexible policies and benefits can give employees the freedom to make independent choices that foster their mental health. In their research, Dr. Worline and her colleague, Dr. Dutton told me. To make sure all employees are aware of their benefits, managers and HR professionals need to prioritize making these policies visible and clear.

Beyond this, organizations can show their support by sharing stories about those who use them. According to Dr. This may seem excessively simple. Research shows that when leaders encourage vulnerability and cultivate compassion at work, they enhance positive feelings and trust among workers — and that trust in leaders not only improves worker performance , it also helps employees feel safe opening up to their managers about personal challenges. Further, employees who work in compassionate environments are shown to be more innovative and adaptable , delivering higher-quality and more consistent work.

In the longer term, compassion has been shown to help organizations attract and retain its most talented workers. A simple but not always easy way leaders can strengthen their compassion muscles and develop greater trust among team members is by exposing their own vulnerability on occasion.

Sociologist Dr. For leaders, vulnerability may mean opening up about a personal challenge, taking responsibility for something gone wrong, or reaching out to a team member who seems like they are struggling without trying to change or solve the issue. If managers are more open about taking mental health days, for instance, then the rest of their teams will feel empowered to do the same. The more employees are able to regard their managers and each other as vulnerable, the more work can become a place of humanity.

Compassion is not a science, but an ongoing experiment. The working paper on the Illinois workplace wellness study is available at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Song said that experimental evaluations in the field of wellness promotion are still relatively uncommon.

While this study provides important insights about some kinds of programs currently in use, many questions remain about the best ways to improve population health, he said. One line of questioning directly related to the JAMA study is whether 18 months is enough time to see an impact from a program like this, or whether the kinds of changes in healthy behaviors the program produced take longer to yield measurable health benefits.

Song has no conflicts of interest to disclose. Campus Alert. Returning to Campus. Do Wellness Programs Work? They may help people change certain behaviors but a new study looks at impact on overall health, costs. Image: iStock. Get more HMS news here The analysis, the first peer-reviewed, large-scale, multisite randomized controlled trial of a workplace wellness program, shows that people who worked at sites offering the program exhibited notably higher rates of some healthy behaviors, but no significant differences in other behaviors compared to the control group.

What worked Worksites offering a wellness program had an 8. The rationale behind the workplace wellness movement The motivation for employer-based wellness programs is straightforward. These findings are somewhat contradictory to other studies, many of which suggest that workplace wellness programs do offer health benefits.

Researchers say the issue isn't necessarily the program. Rather, it's the fact that workers who voluntarily sign up for workplace wellness programs already have good health. If a worker voluntarily agrees to participate in a workplace wellness program, he or she probably has better health than a worker who refrains from participating in such programs. As a result, the true benefits of workplace wellness programs are murky at best.

Does this mean you should avoid using or offering a workplace wellness program to your company's employees? The effects of chronic illnesses such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes account for a staggering three-quarters of health care costs. But are these programs delivering the large-scale savings promised?

However, these programs typically fail to reach their full potential as a result of lower-than-expected participation rates among employees. Only about 20 percent of employees with access to a corporate wellness program take advantage of it.

This is despite the fact that some employers require non-participating employees to pay extra toward their healthcare coverage. A analysis performed by the Rand Corporation and sponsored by the U.