Paper Example on Corporate Wellness Programs: Impact on Employee Productivity

Introduction

The main goal of this scientific thesis is to make an in-depth analysis of the scientific study elaborated by Gubler, Ian, and Lamar (2016); "Doing Well by Making Well: The Impact of Corporate Wellness Programs on Employee Productivity." According to the survey data developed in 2012 by Medical Billing and Coding, the amount of companies that invest money in wellness programs for their employees has increased in the past years. 90% of the companies have an operating wellness program; this comes correlated with the increasing amount of obesity, diabetes, and cancer, among other diseases in the world. These diseases unswervingly affect the companies in terms of absenteeism, insurance costs, the worker's productivity, and most importantly the monetary cost (Baicker, Cutler & Song, 2010; Boles, Pelletier & Lynch 2004). Despite this significance, the existing literature has failed to causally link objective health data from wellness programs with real individual productivity changes in workers (Gubler et al., 2016).

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Recent studies have noted that employers lack the knowledge of how to measure the actual impact of their wellness programs. Therefore, due to insufficiency of know-how skills, the study by Gubler et al. (2016) aims to be the first in the provision of proof linking a panel of individual medical data from a corporate wellness program with the upgrading of productivity objective in industrial workers. The initial purpose of my scientific paper is to intensify my knowledge on the topic and secondly, to present an analysis about the whole process of the aforementioned study, present the insights about the theoretical approach, used methodology and the final results. Another goal is to give personal comments on these three aspects in finalization and offer what would have been my approach to this topic.

2.0 Theoretical Approach and Hypothesis

2.1 Socially responsible employee policies

There is a significant amount of scientific studies currently that proves and entails the benefits of Socially Responsible Firm Policies (CSR) for the company. However, there is a new line of research that is trying to detect how CSR policies can positively affect the employees' performance. According to Aquinis and Glavas (2012), such work policies correlate with many employee behaviors and attitudes, not limited to organizational identification.

The connection between wellbeing projects and profitability is hard to quantify causally. Coordinated target profitability and wellbeing information are hard to get from firms, furthermore, segregating the treatment impact of such projects amid other arrangement changes can be overwhelming (Agle et al. 1999; Glavas & Piderit 2009). Moreover, most organizations offer health projects to all workers, which implies that analysts can't unravel transient profitability changes brought about by, for instance, time slants inefficiency or arbitrary stuns influencing all workers. These variables may clarify why rehashed meta-investigations of money related comes back from worker wellbeing projects incorporate no profitability based return

Aforementioned, there exist various companies that have operating wellness programs due to their immediate and more tangible financial effects. The healthier a company's employers, the cheaper the insurance premiums and the fewer the employees that skip work due to sickness. Additionally, with operating wellness programs, a company can reduce the rate of contracting temporal employees. Conversely, because the link between performance and wellness programs merely blurred and challenging the measure, only a few companies contemplate it on their financial reports on the outcomes of their programs. Thus, Gubler et al. (2016) explore the aspect of the wellness programs as an internal policy for CSR to contribute and enlarge the knowledge of the subject. From these theoretical approaches, Gubler et al. (2016) present a framework through which productivity increase can be achieved through motivation and capability. These scholars also hypothesize that all participating workers will increase productivity because of job satisfaction, while those who learn health problems will further progress due to feelings of gratitude. Additionally, it can be contended that both formerly healthy and unhealthy workers can increase productivity through lifestyle changes that enhance productivity. Finally, productivity due to increased physical capability could be increased if earlier, sick employees strive to improve health.

2.2 Productivity Through Job Satisfaction

Gubler et al. (2016) denote that the first category comprises those employees that will increase their productivity because they feel satisfied with their job. A company proves its care for its employees' quality of life inside and outside the company by implementing a wellness program. The benefits of a wellness program can change the perception that employees can have about their employers. Consequently, through the program, the employees will feel supported by the company, therefore, increasing their job satisfaction no matter the inefficiency of the wellness program (Zoller 2004). Job satisfaction and perceived support from the employee results to increase in job performance (Armeli et al. 1998; Yee et al. 2008).

It is, therefore, hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1: A company-sponsored wellness program will increase average employee productivity regardless of whether the program identified a health concern for the employee or led to improved health.

2.3 Productivity Through Reciprocity

The second group mentioned by Gubler et al. (2016) is comprised of workers who are capable of increasing their productivity through reciprocity to their employer for helping them with the wellness program; including every other work that falls sick without the firm's knowledge of the same. Evidently, often when one unexpectedly receives something from another person, they feel in debt with that person; this implies the same case with the employees of a company with a wellness program. When an employee receives a benefit from the employer, used or not used, they are obliged to strive to relieve the imbalance though loyal contributions to the organization (Blau 1964; Eisenberger et al. 2001).

Most employees lack many ways of giving back to their employees. Thus, it presents the possibility of employee striving to reciprocate through their work. This method means that by hard work, being more proactive or having a better attitude would all be a positive push of productivity.

This establishes the next hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: A company-sponsored wellness program will increase average employee productivity through reciprocity more for employees with existing health problems than for healthy employees, even when the sick employees fail to improve their health.

2.4 Productivity Through Improved Well-being

The third category explored are the employees that will improve their productivity by improving their health or decide to start a healthier lifestyle and better habits inside and outside their working space. Wellness programs tend to not only make health tests but also to give counseling and teach the employees about the essentiality of exercise, having healthy eating habits and mental health among other essential health lessons. According to Parks and Steelman (2008), lessons on improved wellbeing assists employees to make positive lifestyle changes

This aspect of the wellness program not only aims to reach the unhealthy employees importantly but also to the healthy ones due to the fear of not being healthy and the consequences that this may develop. Thayer et al. (1994) denote that, this healthy habits or subtle changes in worker's lifestyle are unswervingly linked to on-the-job positivity productivity of the employees via mechanisms such as stamina, energy, and mood.

It is therefore hypothesized that:

Hypothesis 3: A company-sponsored wellness program will increase average employee productivity more for employees whose health improves after the program than for those employees whose health is not affected by the program, even for those employees without identifiable health problems.

2.5 Productivity Through Improved Physical Capability

Gubler et al. (2016) refer to the fourth and last group of employees as those workers which will increase their productivity by getting healthy; this makes reference to all unhealthy employees that managed to identify sickness and afterward improve their physical health and capability through the wellness program. This group is the one which is expected to give the most significant job productivity improvement as this group will not only improve by the three afore-discussed mechanisms but also by being physically able to advance their job again.

Sadly, most people can agree that sickness or poor health status would reduce the physical and mental capacity significantly. At the workplace, poor health status will be reflected by the hours worked, labor force participation, job choice, turnover, retirement, the structure of employment, and occupational since all of this can be easily detected and measured decision (Currie and Madrian 1999). However, there is no theoretical basis to measure their correlation currently when trying to link health improvements with job productivity on an individual level. The most accurate and employed method that may connect the two variables is absenteeism or presentism to work. The technique; absenteeism or presentism entails that is cheaper to have an employee sick at home than a sick one at the job place because the health effects are transferred to work. According to the surveys from Lockheed Martin, this study links the productivity losses with health problems as; migraines (4.9% loss), allergies (4.1% loss), asthma (5.2% loss), influenza (4.7% loss), and depression (7.6% loss) (Hemp 2004).

This existing literature suggests a final hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: A company-sponsored wellness program will increase average productivity more for employees who remediate current health problems than for any other employee type.

3. Methodology

The study by Gubler et al. (2016) gathered data from a private industrial laundry service company referred to in this research as "LaundryCo." This company is one of the biggest in the USA and give service to prominent leaders from other industries as well as restaurants, construction companies, and hospitals. The first step of data gathering is as follows:

In 2010, LaundryCo contracted an outsourced company to start a wellness program which was offered for free to all employees voluntarily. About 15% of employees did not participate as some were absent on the day of the program. Also, due to the incentives that were used, more employees opted to participate in the exercise. The first step was tacking and checking blood samples. The data span from 2009-2012 and covers all production workers employed at five LaundryCo plants where productivity data are available. The dataset combines three primary data sou...