Health and Work Productivity

Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Workers and Healthy Communities

There is a growing body of research which reveals that companies that promote and protect workers' health are among the most successful and competitive around the world.  Workplaces that actively engage employees in all aspects of health, safety and environmental issues and positively respond to their opinions, views and concerns create a strong foundational base for success. Employees are at their most motivated and creative when they know what needs to be done and when they are in an environment that has a strong safety culture and actively addresses health and wellbeing.

Benefits for Employers

Promoting employee health is a smart business move. Employers who invest in their workers’ physical and mental health reap a range of profit-boosting benefits. The benefits of actively encouraging worker health are:

1. Reducing undue sick leave and disability

2. Lowering medical costs

3. Lowering training costs associated with high turnover

4. Increasing long-term productivity

5. Increasing quality of products and services

Also worth considering are:

1. The costs of prevention versus the costs resulting from workplace accidents

2. Financial consequences of legal violations of health, safety and occupational rules

3. Workers’ health as an important business advantage.

Health Promotion at Work

The workplace is increasingly seen as the perfect place for health promotion and preventive health activities – not only to prevent occupational injury and disability but also to assess and improve people's overall health. Some examples of existing workplace health programs include:

1. Free health screening

2. One-to-one health advice

3. Education about healthy eating, physical activity, smoking cessation and other health-promoting behaviours

4. Rehabilitation programs for back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders

5. Participatory approaches to ergonomic improvements

6. Employee and family counseling/assistance programs

7. Absence-from-work support and training for managers

8. Physiotherapy, at-work massage, chiropody and other complementary therapies