Author: Hannah Letts, Social Chair - [email protected]
In my search for a summer internship, I have come across an interest in corporate wellness. My undergraduate degree is in exercise science and I am very passionate about fitness. I would love to use my fitness knowledge and experience in a public health approach by targeting larger populations. As obesity is becoming more and more prevalent, public health professionals need to find ways to reverse this trend. I think corporate wellness is one possible approach.
More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, with two-thirds being either overweight or obese. This is an important issue because research has supported that obesity may lead to heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. In addition to the negative effects on health, obesity causes extreme health care costs. In 2008, the annual medical cost of obesity was $147 billion, which was 20.6 percent of total U.S. medical expenditures. On top of that, medical costs for individuals who are obese are more than $1400 more than those for individuals of normal weight.
Many find it too difficult to exercise and hard to make healthy meals because of the fast-paced lifestyles many people live nowadays. According to the CDC, the following are the top 10 reasons people do not participate in regular physical activity:
1. Do not have enough time to exercise
2. Find it inconvenient to exercise
3. Lack self-motivation
4. Do not find exercise enjoyable
5. Find exercise boring
6. Lack confidence in their ability to be physically active (low self-efficacy)
7. Fear being injured or have been injured recently
8. Lack self-management skills, such as the ability to set personal goals, monitor progress, or reward progress toward such goals
9. Lack encouragement, support, or companionship from family and friends
10. Do not have parks, sidewalks, bicycle trails, or safe and pleasant walking paths convenient to their homes or offices
Staying healthy is the responsibility of both the individual and the community. Many people may not completely understand the risks they are taking for themselves and their families by living a sedentary life and eating fast food and junk food on a regular basis. I believe assistance from the community through corporate wellness programs can help eliminate many of these barriers. Having a facility at your workplace can greatly reduce the time people perceive physical activity will take up by eliminating the time it takes to get to and from a gym. This would make it much more convenient for these employees. Sharing this experience with other co-workers may help one stay motivated along with allowing you to build a substantial support group providing constant encouragement. Many wellness programs will offer a variety of options, hopefully making it possible to find an activity you enjoy and don’t dread. Also, wellness programs should include educational workshops, providing demonstrations on how to use certain equipment and knowledge on how to track your progress and reach your fitness goals, making it possible for you to feel confident in your ability.
Many of those barriers fall into one of the three basic human needs that determine one’s motivation. The Self-Determination Theory regarding these three needs have been used in many studies supporting an association between the fulfillment of these needs and one’s motivation to exercise. For people to feel inclined to exercise, they must feel autonomous (having control over one’s action, choosing what kind of exercise they would like to participate in), competent (having confidence in one’s ability to perform a certain task), and relatedness (feeling a sense of belonging). I believe corporate wellness programs have the capability of easily providing opportunities for all of these needs to be satisfied.
So, what is the goal of corporate wellness? Mujtaba & Cavico (2013) stated that the goal is to have an efficient, effective, legal, and moral wellness program that helps the employee to attain and keep good health as well as help the employer to manage and reduce healthcare costs. A 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that the “indirect” costs (for example, missed days at work) were approximately four times higher for people with chronic diseases compared to healthy people. We know that obesity is related to chronic diseases, so reductions in absenteeism can be seen through less prevalence of obesity. In order for companies to reach this goal they can provide a variety of options for employees. These include but are not limited to biometric screenings, health risk assessments, group fitness classes and personal training, and educational workshops (i.e. nutrition, exercise, stress, sleep, smoking cessation). Companies can use incentives and/or penalties to increase the likelihood of their employees participating in these services. According Health and Wellness Resource Center, fewer than half (47 percent) of employees earned their full incentive amount in 2014, while 26 percent earned a partial amount. Together, this translates into millions of dollars of unclaimed incentives. The challenge posed here for public health professionals is figuring out how to increase employee’s motivation to change their behavior. Behavior change is a big challenge to professionals and can possibly be achieved through the use of the Transtheoretical Model (also called the Stages of Change) by Prochaska and DiClemente.
In conclusion, I envision corporate wellness contributing to reductions in obesity through a continuum of events. Step one is to convince employers of the importance of corporate wellness, which can be challenging if you are working with an employer who does not see importance in physical activity and healthy diets. Next is for these employers to implement a successful wellness program and reach a high response rate. In turn this will increase the physical activity and nutritional knowledge of the general population, finally resulting in decreases in obesity prevalence. From a public health perspective, I do not see these programs as only benefiting the employee. Corporate wellness programs can result in better health for the individual, bring knowledge and motivation home to families, provide support and influence co-workers, and also reduce U.S. healthcare costs and obesity prevalence.
References
Bonner, D.J. (1990). Effects of corporate wellness programs on absenteeism and health care costs: A meta-analysis. Applied H.R.M. Research, 1(2), 32-37. Retrieved from
http://www.xavier.edu/appliedhrmresearch/1990-Winter/Bonner%20_1_%202.pdf
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. DNPAO. (2015). Adult obesity facts. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. DNPAO. (2011) Adding physical activity to your life. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adding-pa/index.htm
Mujtaba, B.G., & Cavico, F.J. (2013). Corporate wellness programs: Implementation challenges in the modern American workplace. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 1(3), 193–199. doi: 10.15171/ijhpm.2013.36