The basic premise behind corporate wellness (employee health, fitness, wellness and nutrition based-programming) has always played a role in the workplace. In the most simplistic terms, companies understand that sick or injured employees cause them to lose productivity. Companies understand that they need their employees in the office if they expect to get any work done.
However, in the beginning most companies focused solely on more concrete physical problems, like getting injured in the workplace. These companies would take any precautions necessary to ensure their employees did not get physically injured, not only because they would be liable for the injury costs, but because these injuries would be followed by a severe drop in production, ultimately leading to poorer revenues.
It was not until years later that more specific programs were put in place designed to improve overall corporate wellness.
Early Examples of Workplace Health
In its most basic form, the first known example of worksite health promotion was in 1879. At the time, a company known as the Pullman Company (one of the most profitable rail car companies in the area) was creating its own town to promote its products. They believed that an idealized town would lead to better work and better revenue.
So they created the “Pullman Athletic Association” because George Pullman (the founder of the Pullman Association) believed that “his community environment would develop a superior type of American working man”. The athletic activities of the city’s inhabitants were designed with the hope that a society that benefits from the company succeeding will also work harder to ensure that the company succeeds.
Other companies like the National Cash Register followed by adding an employee gym to their center. They also were the first company to ever integrate lunch breaks and snack breaks into a work day, designed to give the employees a chance to rest and socialize during their shifts.
Dozens of different companies decided to follow their lead, each of them looking for health-related ways of improving their own productivity.
Even though variations of worksite health promotion popped up over the early part of the 20th century, the field of corporate wellness did not exist until the 1970’s. At the time, different styles of executive fitness programs were already growing across the industrialized nations. Quickly the idea of integrating them into employee wellness became popular, as many companies were looking for a way to improve their standing in the market.
Still, it was not until 1975 that corporate wellness programs really started to take hold, and even then there was considerable difficulty integrating them efficiently. There was little to no research in the field, and though companies understood the basic concept of employee wellness, very few of them felt that there was any reason to devote significant resources to their success.
Much of this was due to the cost of health care. The theory on corporate wellness was that it would be a useful way to reduce health care costs, rather than a useful way of boosting productivity. Most companies believed that productivity was simply based on hiring the right people and good leadership. Companies did recognize that corporate wellness could save them money, but that money was mostly limited to the health insurance premiums of the employee.
Today, health care costs are ruining small, medium, and even large companies. A family of four cost an average of $11,480 per year for companies in 2006, and has only increased since then. But at the time, health care costs were much lower, costing under a thousand dollars per year on average for a family of four. This made it far more affordable, so companies felt less of a need to worry about the health of their employees.
Still, the idea of workplace wellness was intriguing, and research was finally beginning to appear in field. Most of the research was geared toward whether or not wellness programs had any benefit in the first place, rather than the methods that these instructors use, yet this research still indicated some of the many benefits of adding wellness programs into the workplace.
One of the most important studies was conducted at Johnson and Johnson. The 11,000 employees in the major company were broken off into two groups. Between 1979 and 1983, some of the employees would receive health care intervention programs to ensure that they were experiencing the best available medicine and care. The other group acted as the control.
It was found that over the course of the study, roughly one million dollars were saved in the wellness group when compared to the control group, marking the first time that wellness had been shown to decrease costs in a peer reviewed journal.
Another major study took place in 1985 by the DuPont corporation, involving roughly 29,000 employees who participated in a comprehensive wellness program, while 14,500 employees acted as non-participants. The study took place for two years. The employees that participated in the program took 11,726 fewer sick days than the control group, even though they had twice as many participants.
Clearly, these were some significant findings. What’s more, they were studies that were published in peer reviewed journals – respectable journals that the corporate world appreciated.
Growth of the Corporate Health and Wellness Field
Fitness and wellness programs started to really take off during the 1980’s. At first companies were focusing on physical fitness, opening gyms, and providing exercise opportunities for their employees. Over time, however, these same companies started to adopt more of the complete body wellness that we see today, including:
- Stress management programs and access to mental health officers
- Open programs to help employees quit smoking
- Weight control options for obese staff
- Massage and chiropractic visits, especially for lower back pain
- Healthy living learning sessions
Companies all over the world searched for ways to help their employees provide better quality work and greater productivity, and they were starting to see real results.
The US Government decided to get involved. In the 1970’s they had already created the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) and were searching for ways to research the effectiveness of wellness programs across the United States. With the help of the National Institute of Health, the government dedicated three million dollars to the city of Birmingham, Alabama, and used that money to study 4,000 city employees over the course of five years.
What they found was that those employees that decided to take advantage of the employee health promotion plan saved their respective companies an amazing seven million dollars in health care costs and missed labor – almost $2,000 per employee.
The University of Michigan completed a similar study and yielded similar results, about $1,500 per employee per year. Perhaps more impressive about these numbers was that they only included the saved health care costs – they did not include the increase in productivity by these employees, a number that we now know can range anywhere from $1.50 to $5.00 per dollar spent.
All of these nationally recognized studies built up the importance of corporate wellness as a field and helped pave the way for further exploration into the future of the industry.
