Women’s Health SEPTEMBER 2019 | 105
Workplace Wellness Study
followed 5,000 of its employees
who were randomly assigned to
a health programme or a control
group. After a year, it recorded
no ‘significant effects’ for
outcomes such as absenteeism
and medical spending.
These findings seem to
contradict previous studies that
showed similar programmes to
work wonders, but the Illinois
researchers attributed this to
self-selection: employees
already leading healthy lifestyles
were far more likely to sign up
than those who needed the
intervention. Those who would
benefit from a meditation class
or a lunchtime run are often
those who consider themselves
too busy to schedule it in.
However, the researchers were
keen to point out that this
doesn’t conclusively prove that
workplace wellness won’t work.‘Exercise always works if you do it,’ says Dr Silvano
Zanuso, director of Technogym’s medical and scientific
department. A Milan University study compared
Technogym employees with those of another Italian
multinational company and found that absenteeism
and incidence of metabolic syndrome were lower among
the former. ‘Why?’ asks Dr Zanuso. ‘Not because we’re
inherently better, but because we work in an
environment where doing physical activity is easier.’
Part of that is having a well-appointed gym a medicine
ball’s throw away. The sight of colleagues going to the
gym normalises healthy lifestyles. ‘It’s culturally
engaging,’ says Dr Zanuso, who did tai chi this morning
and yesterday met vice president Pierluigi Alessandri
for a 5.30am bike ride. In behavioural psychology, ‘social
proof ’ – what others do – is one of the most powerful
influences. Employees at the other company in the
study merely received access to online information
about health – not exactly fitspiring.
Of course, motivating your employees is easier when
your company has ‘keeping fit’ at its chiselled core. Dr
Zanuso concedes that it’s easier to make moderately
active people more active than it is to make sedentarypeople moderately active, even in the
idyllic Village. Outside of its campus,
Technogym assists its business customers
not just with installation, but education
and facility management, too: ‘Otherwise,
you have a big gym with nobody using it.’
Without this cultural shift, wellness
programmes aren’t just a waste of money- they can even be counterproductive.
Academics from the Cass Business School
and Stockholm University conducted an
analysis of such initiatives – published in
the book The Wellness Syndrome – which
found that they often had little effect
beyond making employees feel guilty.
They also fed into cultural prejudices: if
you don’t exercise and eat healthily, you
must be lazy and ill-disciplined. Some
initiatives risk tipping the work-life
imbalance further still. There’s something
quite unsettling about the idea of Google
installing sleep pods at its new London HQ.
A danger is that workplace wellness
becomes a euphemistic means of cranking
the handle even harder. Take the voguish
policy of unlimited paid leave adopted by
the likes of Netflix, LinkedIn and Virgin.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that, at some
companies, employees can feel pressured
into taking less time off than they did
before, fearing that they would miss out
on promotion or that they won’t have
a job to come back to. It’s better to reassure
employees that it’s okay to use their full
entitlement – a YouGov survey found
that a third of UK workers don’t.
Fit for purpose?
‘At a conference, I asked an HR director
in finance, “Why are you banking guys
suddenly into wellbeing?”’ says Cary
Cooper, professor of organisational
psychology at Alliance Manchester
Business School. ‘He replied, “Two words:
regrettable turnover.”’ The finance
company had lost between 25% and 30%
of its staff during the recession; those
who remained were working longer hours
and feeling less secure about their jobs.
So, the wellbeing initiative was intended
partly to attract new staff, but also to
prevent existing ones from burning out.
Professor Cooper prefers to talk about
workplace ‘wellbeing ’. ‘“Wellness” tends
to imply gyms and apples on your desk,’ he
says. ‘Wellbeing implies a culture where you
feel valued and look forward to going into
work, one that helps you work flexibly and
manage your work-life balance, where trust
and recognition of your achievements are
part and parcel.’ He argues that workplace
wellbeing is more psychological than
physical, although the latter affects the
former. Too often, we’re distracted from
what’s really vital to our all-round health by
the visible and fashionable trappings. ‘It’s
not about beanbags and ping-pong,’ he says.‘Companies are realising the cost
ill health has on their workforce’
The proportion of British workers
who are unhappy in their jobs*.
National productivity is lagging- is corporate wellness the fix?
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