ABSTRACT
Adherence to recommended health behaviour (i.e. diet, sleep, exercise) guidelines has significantly declined over the past few years alongside increased stress, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and other associated health problems, especially within the workplace. New ways of encouraging these practices are needed as society continues to become more fast-paced with little perceived time remaining for leisure or personal activities that promote health. The workplace is an ideal place to implement health promotion programmes as most of the population spends nearly half of their waking hours at work. The workplace is a controlled environment that has been found to be an ideal place to implement new health behaviour change programmes as they have the potential to be convenient, extend social support, and reach a large population of people without requiring large amounts of time.
Unhealthy behaviours can lead to increased absenteeism and employee turnover, and decreases in overall worker productivity, thus significantly hurting businesses. Medical costs are also positively correlated with employees’ unhealthy behaviours. Employees are not eating the necessary amount of fruit and vegetables, obtaining adequate sleep, or doing enough physical activity to be fully productive in their work. To address this need, workplace health promotion programmes can be implemented, particularly those that have managerial support, offer consistent feedback and follow-up, and have a simple design created with the employee’s input. Programmes designed with these components are more successful in achieving their goals. The return on investment for these programmes is quite high on average in decreasing absenteeism rates and improving worker productivity. As such, these programmes can be successful in helping businesses to improve employees’ health, reduce financial loss to the organisation, and promote an overall culture of health and safety.
