Why people engage in a weight loss intervention at their workplace - a stratified case study

From Cognition to Behavior: Associations of Workplace Health Culture and Workplace Health Promotion Performance With Personal Healthy Lifestyles

Introduction: The aim of this study was to explore associations of workplace health culture and workplace health promotion (WHP) performance with employees' healthy lifestyles and health statuses.

Methods: In total, 27 enterprises and 1,732 participants were recruited for a cross-sectional designed survey. At the group level, Workplace Health Scorecard was used to measure WHP performance, and it was filled out by the WHP representative at each workplace. At the personal level, a personal questionnaire was used to measure workplace health culture, healthy lifestyles, and health statuses. A hierarchical linear model analysis was used to assess correlations between these variables.

Results: Workplace health culture was significantly related to WHP performance, healthy lifestyles, and health statuses. In particular, the peer support domain was greatly related to healthy behaviors like physical activity (β = 0.596, p < 0.001), vegetable consumption (β = 0.291, p < 0.001) and fruit consumption (β = 0.285, p < 0.05), and it may illustrate the importance of establishing peer support to promote healthy behaviors.

Conclusions: WHP performance was significantly related to workplace health culture especially health policies, health climate, and peer and supervisor support. Hence, building a good workplace health culture should be taken seriously, and more studies exploring associations of health culture and WHP performance with employees' health are needed.

Managers attitude towards implementing workplace health promotion programmes to employees in eldercare: a cross-sectional study

Objectives

To determine the attitudes of eldercare services managers to the potential health benefits of workplace health promotion programmes (WHPPs), including physical exercise during working hours and the feasibility of implementing a WHPP at the workplace.

Study design

A cross-sectional study.

Methods

Respondents filled out a 14-item questionnaire on attitudes towards the potential health benefits of WHPPs and the feasibility of implementing WHPPs. Differences between groups were analysed using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The significance level was set to p ​= ​0.05. Bonferroni’s correction was used in the setting of multiple comparisons. A content analysis was performed exploring answers provided in the optional comment section in the questionnaire.

Results

695 eldercare services managers in Denmark were contacted by email, 393 replied, and 382 respondents were included in the analysis (54.7%). The survey revealed that 89.8% of the respondents believed that WHPPs would increase health, 89.6% believed that it would increase well-being and 87.6% believed that WHPPs would increase workability among workers. 87.7% expressed a willingness towards implementing WHPPs and believed ‘it to be a good idea’. Respondents with a negative attitude to the feasibility of implementing WHPPs, were more likely to hold negative attitudes to the potential health benefits of WHPPs (p ​< ​0.001). Organisational issues were the most frequently stated barrier to implementation.

Conclusions

The majority of eldercare managers expressed a positive attitude to the benefits of WHPPs and their implementation. Addressing organisational issues and ensuring management support in the planning stage of a WHPP is highly important.

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Managers in eldercare are willing to implement workplace health promotion programmes (WHPPs).

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Managers in eldercare express that WHPPs can benefit the health of their employees.

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Managers in eldercare are not barriers for implementing WHPPs.

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Lack of knowledge on how to implement WHPPs is the prime reason for non-implementation.