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Why Many Workers Avoid Wellness Programs

Company health and wellness programs aimed at reducing companies’ health care costs while improving the quality of employees’ lives often have few takers, even among the workers who would most benefit.

Brad Bell and Chris Collins, professors in ILR’s Human Resource Studies Department, have identified what employees see as the biggest participation barriers.

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Life demands, programs that are too time consuming and “overwhelming to engage” are the top reasons cited, according to their research, conducted through the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.

The study, taking place in a Fortune 500 company, is the first step in a larger effort to identify interventions that are – and just as important are not – successful in overcoming barriers. Listen to the professors explain the research.

The analysis focuses on data provided by 3,000 of the firm’s employees who responded to a survey asking them to assess the significance of 14 potential barriers to their participation in two programs – one focusing on healthy eating and the other on exercise and movement.

Beyond the most significant factors, respondents cited program costs, a lack of information about the programs -- especially their benefits, and an absence of social support from friends, family members, colleagues and supervisors. Some were skeptical about results of the programs.

Respondents rated medical issues as relatively insignificant impediments, even for the program involving exercise.

Across both programs, less healthy respondents tended to see the full range of barriers as more challenging to participation than did their more healthy peers – and their actual participation rates were lower, as well.

Remote workers generally perceived significantly greater barriers to participation in both programs than did those physically working in company offices, and they, too, had relatively low participation rates.

These results, researchers said, are suggestive of interventions that might encourage employees to partake in health and wellness programs. Providing time off to participate should help, particularly if it encourages support among groups of peers who could engage together and if it has the active encouragement of supervisors. Reimbursing employees for any costs involved might facilitate participation, too.

The importance of communication is never to be underestimated, Bell and Collins found. In this case, the focus would be on the availability of programs and on using colleagues’ testimonials to shore up doubts about the programs’ potential payoffs.

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