In an era marked with economic swings and health-care reform, it appears that organizations are staying consistent in their performance across these benchmarks. The WWC could be useful for organizations, practitioners, and researchers in assessing the quality of WHP programs.
Objective Debates about the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs (WWPs) call for a review of the evidence for return on investment (ROI) of WWPs. We examined literature on the heterogeneity in methods used in the ROI of WWPs to show how this heterogeneity may affect conclusions and inferences about ROI. Methods We conducted a scoping review using systematic review methods and adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. We reviewed PubMed, EconLit, Proquest Central, and Scopus databases for published articles. We included articles that (1) were published before December 20, 2019, when our last search was conducted, and (2) met our inclusion criteria that were based on target population, target intervention, evaluation method, and ROI as the main outcome. Results We identified 47 peer-reviewed articles from the selected databases that met our inclusion criteria. We explored the effect of study characteristics on ROI estimates. Thirty-one articles had ROI measures. Studies with costs of presenteeism had the lowest ROI estimates compared with other cost combinations associated with health care and absenteeism. Studies with components of disease management produced higher ROI than programs with components of wellness. We found a positive relationship between ROI and program length and a negative relationship between ROI and conflict of interest. Evaluations in small companies (≤500 employees) were associated with lower ROI estimates than evaluations in large companies (>500 employees). Studies with lower reporting quality scores, including studies that were missing information on statistical inference, had lower ROI estimates. Higher methodologic quality was associated with lower ROI estimates. Conclusion This review provides recommendations that can improve the methodologic quality of studies to validate the ROI and public health effects of WWPs.
Objective: This study explored subgroups of performance profiles measured by organizations' Well Workplace Checklist (WWC) benchmark scores and examined company characteristics associated with performance subgroups. Methods: The sample included 3728 US organizations that completed the WWC in 2008 to 2015. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to extract distinct subgroups of organizations based on benchmark performance. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine associations between the characteristics of organizations and their performance subgroup. Results: Three distinct subgroups of performance resulted from the LPA. Significant associations were found between subgroup assignment and characteristics such as size, industry, how WHP initiatives were paid for, and reasons for implementing WHP initiatives. Conclusion: The characteristics associated with subgroups of performance suggest utility for developing specific interventions tailored to different types of organizations to improve their overall quality of WHP initiatives.
Calls to address workforce health inequities have been met with expanded well-being programming, without an assessment of programming relevance or evaluation of equity-related outcomes. The goal of this commentary is to summarize current practices and gaps in evaluation of well-being programs, provide evidence supporting the need for broader participation in well-being offerings, and make recommendations to incorporate health equity measures into planning and evaluation efforts conducted by both employers and vendors. Data sharing, expanded measurement, more rigorous evaluation methods, and alignment of goals are some of the recommendations to better address health inequities and differential participation among employees.
Background: Workplace wellness programs (WWPs) are increasingly promoted by businesses and governments as an important strategy to improve workers’ overall health and well-being and to reduce health care and other organizational costs. Few studies have evaluated WWPs in small businesses to provide evidence on the potential return-on-investment (ROI) that WWPs might yield. This study aimed to fill this gap by presenting a quasi-experimental, ROI analysis of a WWP in a small company. Methods: This observational quasi-experimental study evaluated economic outcomes of a multicomponent WWP implemented by a small long-term care company. The company provided approximately 2 years of de-identified, individualized data on its employees for 2013–2015. There were 116 WWP participants and 323 nonparticipants. Difference-in-differences models were used to evaluate the program using organizational costs and ROI estimates. Findings: The estimated program cost was $132.692 (95% confidence interval [CI]: [$112.957, $156.101]) per participant and the estimated organizational costs savings were $210.342 (95% CI: [−4354.095, 2002.890]). The WWP achieved an ROI of $0.585 (95% CI: [−$35.095, $14.103]) per participant. Although not statistically significant, the results suggest that the WWP saved $1.585 for every $1 invested. Conclusions/Application to Practice: These results suggest that the evaluated WWP yielded a positive, although nonsignificant, ROI estimate. While ROI is still one of the most common evaluation metrics used in workplace wellness, few studies present ROI estimates of WWPs in small companies. Given policy efforts to promote WWPs in small businesses, there is a need to conduct high-quality ROI analyses for WWPs in smaller companies.
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