Content area
Full Text
Janice T.S. Ho: Division of Human Resource and Quality Management, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Introduction
Corporate wellness programmes are long-term organizational activities designed to promote the adoption of organizational practices and personal behaviour conducive to maintaining or improving employee physiological, mental, and social wellbeing (Wolfe and Parker, 1994). In Singapore, there is a growing trend for companies to offer wellness programmes at the workplace (The Straits Times, 1994). Research conducted by the National Productivity Board in 1992 on the Quality of Worklife reported that a majority of the companies in Singapore was concerned with the need to contain rising health costs. In 1991, for example, the Singaporean employer had to spend S$252 in medical costs on each worker, which was an increase of some 6.8 per cent over the previous year (Alsagoff, 1993). However, only a minority of these companies were actually considering the implementation of wellness programmes as a viable alternative to health care cost containment. Of those companies which had chosen to adopt wellness programmes, most of them cited that the main objective in doing so was to increase employee productivity, to improve employees' welfare benefits and morale, and to enhance the corporate image of the company (Wong, 1993).
Another major concern of organizations today is the increased competition and technological changes. Global and domestic competition have resulted in efforts to make corporations "lean and mean" through cost reduction and downsizing, job elimination, reductions in "non-productive" repair and maintenance, and job speeding and combination. These changes undoubtedly will have negative effects on employee health or wellbeing by increasing the likelihood of overwork, work stress, job dissatisfaction and accidents (Wolfe et al., 1994).
Technological changes not only have resulted in reduced work concentration and efficiency, they have also created several stress-producing factors: work overload, work pressure, and job insecurity. The potential for stress and stress-related effects of technological changes is substantial (Donaldson, 1993), as are their costs to organizations (Manning, Jackson and Fusilier, 1996). This is because workers who feel stressed will not be able to perform to their fullest potential and their health may also be adversely affected thus lowering productivity levels.
Rationale for providing wellness programmes at the worksite include greater access to adults compared to other community programmes,...