Measures to Promote Employee Health

At the work place health promotion may be wildly defined as any effort to stop disease or premature death through organisational and behavioural change. Health promotion targets on prevention instead of treatment or cure. Hence at the company the health programme is planned around development and prevention of controllable risk factors such as, obesity, smoking stress, high level of cholesterol, hypertension and low level of physical fitness, which are responsible for most of the major diseases. Promoting health consciousness is not a simple task. It needs continuous systematic campaign, education and genuine support from top management. Before the company begin planning for the programme, it ought to investigate the requirement and resources of the employees and the organisation both. Basically the planning programme involves five steps: (1) setting goals (2) developing the plan (3) allocation of resources (4) implementation and (5) evaluation of the plan. The core health promotion activities might cover such areas as following:

a)      Eating wisely

b)      Healthy living

c)      Smoking cessation

d)     Exercise and Physical fitness

e)      Protecting oneself from workplace hazards.

f)       Stress management

The primary effort and investment needed to institute such health promotion programmes might prove to be fairly heavy but the long run rewards are fairly fruitful: development in employees health result in better work attitudes, job satisfaction, higher morale, dropped absenteeism and turnover.

Box: Components of A Typical Wellness Programme (Epstein)