Yesterday, one of my LinkedIn posts reached over 20,000 impressions. The post concerned new research that questioned the effectiveness of corporate wellbeing programs. Some responses were febrile even though they had not read the open-access article! The points raised in the research were not new. Some have been covered in this blog previously, but the …
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) is Australia’s national newspaper on business issues. Recently its Editor Michael Stutchbury stated that he purposely focussed the newspaper on being business-friendly. This is understandable as businesses and employers, and entrepreneurs are the paper’s subscriber base and market, but sometimes articles can be too business friendly, and a recent article …
Many companies operate wellness programs at work. Some of these claim to reduce the likelihood of work-related injury or ill health. Others are aimed at reducing chronic health risks such as obesity, heart disease and more. A recent book from the United States encourages us to be sceptical of such programs and ask about employers’ …
In some Australian workplaces, wellness programs seem to be a dominant interpretation of occupational health and safety (OHS). This is being encouraged through the support of the OHS regulatory agencies. According to one expert, the benefits of workplace wellness programs remain under-researched and what research there is requires validation. Recently Zrui Song of Harvard Medical …
Recently Corporate Bodies International circulated an annual membership offer (no costs listed in this link) to its Australian market. It said: “Employees and their families have access over to over 300 live webinars and exercise classes, monthly health videos, posters, online GP, Dietitian and Exercise Physiologist appointments – from anywhere in the world, just to … Continue reading “Wellness programs need to fit business management”
On 30 March 2016, Melbourne hosted a Workplace Wellness conference organised by Informa. (SafetyAtWorkBlog attended as a guest.) The reason for attending was to see how occupational health and safety (OHS) is growing, or needs to grow, to accommodate workplace wellness issues and how the wellness sector looks on OHS.
Workplace psychological health has been dominated by wellness advocates for several decades. Occupational health and safety (OHS) is seen by many as an interloper with “new” regulations that impose rules, expectations, notifications, and records on a corporate wellness sector that has been hugely influential on employers’ perspectives of mental health at work. This interjection by …
