Finding Fit: Workplace Wellness Programs Success

The Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces at the University of California, Berkeley, was asked by Transamerica Institute and its Transamerica Center for Health Studies to create an Employer Guide to fully engage employees in health-promoting behaviors in small and medium organizations.

This project builds upon work that had previously been completed by the Institute for Health and Productivity Studies (IHPS) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where investigators provided preliminary information on how to design, implement, and evaluate workplace health promotion programs.

Two issues remained unresolved in the IHPS study: (1) the extent to which the findings are applicable to all sizes of organizations, and (2) how to engage employees more effectively such that their participation in wellness programs significantly increases and is sustained over a long period.

Finding Fit: Workplace Wellness Programs Success is a research report resulting from an initiative to specifically address these two issues by examining the potential fit between wellness program requirements and the opportunities and constraints of all organizations, and in particular, with small and medium organizations. The project team also developed an Employer Guide, which offers employers a way to match their organizational opportunities and constraints to best-fitting wellness programs and multiple ways to improve employee participation in wellness programs.

To learn more about Transamerica Institute's workplace wellness initiatives, visit here.