Workplace wellbeing – or health promotion?

Busting the myth about return on investment

Summary:

Occupational physician Paul Nicholson discusses some of the latest evidence relating to workplace health promotion and wellbeing programmes

Studies that report positive financial return on investment (ROI) from workplace-wellbeing programmes are commonplace, but in general, studies are of poor quality¹. In 2010, a flawed and yet often-cited review, frequently referred to as ‘the Harvard study’, reported that every dollar spent on workplace wellbeing programmes saved about $3.27 in medical costs and about $2.73 in absenteeism costs; albeit the authors emphasised that their findings may not be generalisable². Almost a decade later, two of the authors of that study have reported the results of their own large multi-site cluster randomized trial and concluded that their recent findings may temper expectations about the financial ROI that wellness programmes can deliver in the short term³…..

Dr Paul Nicholson is an occupational physician and former associate medical director of global medical operations for Procter & Gamble. He is a past chair of the BMA Occupational Medicine Committee and a past president of the Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM). In 2017, he

produced the SOM report: Occupational health: the value proposition1

Author: Nicholson J

Tags cost benefit analysis wellbeing

Occupational Health at Work June/July 2019 (vol. 16/1) pp16-21

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