“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.”Â
Mark Twain
How Healthy Are Employees?
I recently did an analysis of a random sample of over 1,000 working professionals in diverse industries who have used our personal stress and health assessment called StressScan. Here are some of our findings:
- Alcohol Use: 14.3% reported consuming more than 2 alcoholic beverages daily
- Drug Use: 4.0% reported using non-prescription drugs for recreational purposes sometimes to always
- Smoking: Only 10.0% reported smoking in our professional sample
- Exercise: 41.1% reported “never” or “rarely” getting 20-30 minutes of exercise three times a week
- Sleep: 26.8% “often” or “always” received less sleep then they need because they had difficulty falling or staying asleep
- Time Pressured: 56.7% reported “often” or “always” feeling pressured and hurried for time (not having enough time to get enough done at work or him)
National Health Statistics
A recent Center for Disease Control Publication largely confirmed our StressScan findings. Here are just a few highlights:
- Obesity: Approximately two-thirds of the adult population are either overweight or obese.
- Overall Health: For the period January through June 2008, the percentage of persons who had excellent or very good health was 65.9% (95% confidence interval = 64.94–66.77%), which was not significantly different from the 2007 estimate of 66.0%.
- High Blood Pressure:Â Percent of persons 20 years and over with hypertension: 31 (2001-2004)
- Life Expectancy: Females: 80.4 years and for males: 75.2 years
- Psychological Distress: For both sexes combined, persons aged 45–64 years (3.7%) were more likely to have experienced serious psychological distress during the past 30 days compared with persons aged 18–44 years (2.7%) and 65 years and over (2.4%).
Employee Wellness Makes Sense
A number of comprehensive reviews, or meta-analyses, have analyzed findings across large numbers of individual studies of worksite health promotion and disease prevention programs in the recent years. These programs provide health education to their employees to promote behaviors that will improve health or prevent disease, and typically include exercise programs, health-risk appraisal, weight control, nutrition information, stress management, disease screening, and smoking cessation.
The review found significant return on investment for the programs provided by these nine employers, with the range of benefit-to-cost ratios, ranging from $1.49 to $4.91 in benefits per dollar spent on the program, and a median of $3.14 ((Nowack, K. (2008). Coaching for Stress: StressScan. Editor: Jonathan Passmore, Psychometrics in Coaching, Association for Coaching, UK, pp. 254-274)). In a recent 2010 critical meta-analysis of the literature on costs and savings associated with such programs, Harvard Medical school researchers found that medical costs fall by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs and that absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73 for every dollar spent.
Without a doubt, it makes great cents for companies to support and promote employee well-being and health…I think I will get out for my morning run now….Be well…..
Ken Nowack
Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)
