Dive Brief:
- An article at Stat looks into the claim that workplace wellness programs are improving employee health and reducing preventable disease – even though actionable data on that front is lacking.
- The article notes the popularity of wellness, citing a 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 1,997 firms that found 49% of employers with workforces of 200 or less offer wellness programs, while 81% of larger employers do the same.
- After more than two decades of wellness promotion and adoption, there is a "startling lack of rigorous evidence" that those programs are actually improving the overall health of workers.
Dive Insight
The article explores the pros and cons of workplace wellness, and explains that most of the data that "proves" that wellness is worth the money and effort comes from wellness vendors themselves, who earn an estimated $8 billion in annual revenue.
Overall, Stat offers arguments on both sides of the wellness debate. They conclude that while wellness programs have not "lived up to their hype," they are well-intentioned and haven't completely failed. But in the end, workplace wellness programs have the potential to improve employee health, yet so far objective proof/data they are working on any mass level currently does not exist.
At any rate, a group of major companies have banded together to promote the connection between wellness and profitability. The group is working with The Vitality Institute, a "global research organization" that wants to help strengthen the "evidence base" on what does and does not work in wellness.
