Dive Brief:
- The Health Metrics Working Group, a group of major corporations and health organizations, is calling for the voluntary public reporting of workforce health metrics.
- Working through an initiative of the Vitality Institute, the effort is led by representatives from more than a dozen organizations, including IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, PepsiCo, Unilever and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
- According to the group, which met for more than a year to discuss best practices for reporting workforce health metrics, "evidence is mounting" that workforce health is critical to the financial health of a corporation.
Dive Insight:
To make its point, the group noted that the latest Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine contains three studies that examine the stock prices of companies with high-performing employee wellness programs. All three studies found companies with high-performing employee wellness programs outperformed the Standard and Poor's index by 7-16% per year.
Derek Yach, chief health officer of Vitality and the chair of the Health Metrics Working Group, explained that based on the group's work and the research, employee health is extremely relevant to investors, shareholders and boards of directors.
He added that employers benefit through "improved understanding of their business models, better decision making, increased investor confidence, improved reputation, and greater stakeholder support."
