More than half of all nurses nationwide are overweight. That could be the result of individual lifestyle choices but researchers say their work environment, like many others, is likely the leading factor.
Over several years, work environments with sporadic shifts, long hours and limited food choices can cause an onslaught of chronic diseases, said Pouran Faghri, a University of Connecticut professor of allied health sciences.
“You need to build an environment that allows employees to live and breathe,” Faghri said. “You live in your workplace. It needs to be conducive to your health.”
As people continue to work longer ”” leaving less time to exercise and eat healthy ”” Faghri said employers need to be mindful of how their workplace affects employees, not only physically, but mentally and socially. Poor lighting can affect employees sleep and circadian rhythm. Little control over scheduling can spur depression.
There”™s a direct relationship between humans”™ health and their environment, said Faghri, who is a principal investigator at the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace. Researchers at the center, known as CPH-NEW, are investigating the effectiveness and economic benefit of workplace interventions to improve employees”™ health.
Large employers like Pitney Bowes in Stamford have emphasized the importance of employees”™ health for years, citing the productivity benefits. But with Affordable Care Act regulations, which place responsibility on employers for their employees”™ health care costs, Faghri said employers may want to consider the long-term savings available when their employees are healthy.
Currently the officials at the center are encouraging small business to evaluate their workplace and apply for a limited number of small grants to implement strategic health initiatives. Whereas health tips are often passed down through impersonalized means like lectures or pamphlets, Faghri said strategic change needs to come from the bottom up, with tailor-made plans to address specific concerns.
For instance, for the past five years CPH-NEW researchers have been working with the state”™s Department of Correction to determine ways to improve prison guard health. Nearly 80 percent of guards are obese, their life expectancy is significantly lower than the general public and most die within five years of retirement, Faghri said.
The guards are often fearful of attack and they work in a noisy environment with sometimes poor air quality. But by working with the employees, CPH-NEW determined the real reason behind the obesity stemmed from frequent unplanned back-to-back shifts. Because workers didn”™t know whether they”™d be needed for double shifts, many brought in large coolers of food every day and then ate whatever was there regardless of whether they worked a second shift, Faghri said.
To test different intervention strategies, Faghri split the guards into two groups. One group received traditional top-down educational lectures and readings while the other group designed their own weight-loss plans. They put up posters around vending machines, received lessons on how to pack their coolers with healthy food and held each other responsible in their plans to lose weight. The motivation was higher and weight lost greater in the second group, Faghri said. “You can”™t have a one size fits all approach,” she said. “Every workplace has its distinct characteristics. Employees are the core people who know what”™s best for them.”
A health analysis and intervention could have profound impacts on employees”™ lives. But when there isn”™t a measurable return on investment after one or five years, it can be hard to convince employers to make an investment, said Martin Cherniack, co-director of CPH-NEW. Unless employers are tracking the long-term health of a large pool of employees, they won”™t know if a health intervention saved money. They can only rely on subjective observation of the quality of work life.
“When you try to monetize quality of life, you run into problems,” Cherniack said. “There”™s a question of how we value it.”
Typically changes in productivity are the result of fewer people and more automation, Cherniack said. How the return on investment is measured doesn”™t include changes in employees”™ quality of life.
Moving forward Cherniack said he believed widespread change wouldn”™t be possible without small employers”™ participation, which are the least likely to have the means to invest. Also alluding to employers”™ growing responsibilities for employees”™ health with the Affordable Care Act, Cherniack said small businesses may need to look to insurance exchanges and providers for more preventative care support. If they band together to increase their bargaining power, funds to support health interventions and workplace evaluations might become more readily available.
“Many small- and medium-sized employers are very committed to their workforces and have concerns about an older workforce,” he said. “That concern is very real. There”™s just not the means to do anything about it.”
