Long-term health promotion programme for employees can yield successful lifestyle changes and permanent health impacts
Previous studies have indicated that workplace interventions can improve the personnel’s health and save thus the employer’s costs, but there have not been investigations to prove the permanence of such results.
- Usually workplace health promotion interventions are too short, ranging from a few months to a few years, to yield permanent health impacts. Our research article presents a valuable example of how a comprehensive, stable, long-term health promotion programme was implemented, who participated and what were the generated returns of the programme, tells doctoral student Antti Äikäs from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥.
According to the study, 58% of all employees participated both in the annual work fitness day and in the targeted services at least once during the programme. More than 80% attended health risk assessments and 67% of them reported that they had made a lifestyle change during the first four years and 57% had made a lifestyle change during the last four years of the programme. The percentages of successful participants reporting related health benefits were 23% and 18% respectively for the first and latter half of the programme.
Face-to-face contacts were crucial for successful lifestyle changes
All three health status groups (poor, moderate, high) participated in the services of the programme. This suggests that multiple services and entry channels are needed to reach sufficient levels of engagement, especially in poor health status groups. An interesting finding was made when analysing successful and non-successful participants over the longitudinal research:
- The number of face-to-face contacts, group contacts and total contacts were significantly higher in the group which had made lifestyle changes and managed to improve their health parameters based on health risk assessments. However, online contacts did not differ between successful and non-successful groups. The results offer notable insight into health promotion efforts; human touch is still needed in the increasingly digitalised world, states Äikäs.
To sum up, the study evaluated the overall health impact of the programme from four research perspectives: penetration, implementation, participation and effectiveness. In conclusion, the research group’s findings indicate that the programme achieved a moderate positive health impact among the studied employees.
The programme was implemented in a Finnish wood Supply organisation (N=651) from 2010 to 2017 and it was designed and carried out by 4event Ltd. The majority of the personnel were males and local forestry officers or organisation officials. Altogether, the programme consisted of over 120 services and administrative tools. No robust incentives were used to promote participation, even though the employees were free to attend some of the services during paid working hours. The health data was collected via a health risk questionnaire and nine biometrical screenings at three different points of time.
The research was a sub-study of the dissertation by Antti Äikäs. Metsämiesten säätiö and Urheiluopistosäätiö supported financially the data collection, analysis and manuscript writing process.
The original open access article:
Äikäs A, Absetz, P, Hirvensalo M, Pronk N. 2019. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Aug 28 Epub Open access doi: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000001699
More information:
Doctoral student Antti Äikäs, +358 50 3690908, antti.h.aikas@student.jyu.fi