JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Effect of a Workplace Wellness Program on Employee Health and Economic Outcomes: A Randomized Clinical Trial.
Employers have increasingly invested in workplace wellness programs to improve employee health and decrease health care costs. However, there is little experimental evidence on the effects of these programs. ⋯ Among employees of a large US warehouse retail company, a workplace wellness program resulted in significantly greater rates of some positive self-reported health behaviors among those exposed compared with employees who were not exposed, but there were no significant differences in clinical measures of health, health care spending and utilization, and employment outcomes after 18 months. Although limited by incomplete data on some outcomes, these findings may temper expectations about the financial return on investment that wellness programs can deliver in the short term.