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Good health! But whose job is it? Employers’ challenge in ways of wellbeing

Human Resource Management International Digest

ISSN: 0967-0734

Article publication date: 9 January 2017

488

Abstract

Purpose

Most workplace health promotion efforts have failed to consistently and sustainably encourage employees to take responsibility for their health. The purpose of this paper is to explore a potentially high-impact solution – Health Codes of Conduct – for engaging and motivating employees to assume responsibility for their health.

Design/methodology/approach

This mixed methods study draws on interview and survey methodology with a sample of 149 working adults to examine the feasibility of Health Codes of Conduct. Descriptive and inferential statistics are calculated to understand reactions, characteristics of the companies likely to support the idea, and components of a Health Code of Conduct.

Findings

Nearly all employees offered moderate to high support for Health Codes of Conduct; this included overweight but not obese employees. Additionally, all demographic groups either moderately or strongly supported the policy when they included either monetary incentives (such as prescription discounts) or often overlooked non-monetary incentives (such as employee recognition). Some of the more popular features of Health Codes of Conduct included annual physical exams, exercise routines, and simply being encouraged to stay home when ill.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to propose the concept of Health Codes of Conduct and solicit feedback from employees on this novel idea. Furthermore, the authors identify both the monetary and non-monetary incentives and disincentives that employees believe would be most compelling.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Retraction notice

The Publisher wishes to retract the precis article “Good health! But whose job is it?: Employers’ challenge in ways of wellbeing”, published in Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 25 No. 1, 2017. It has come to the attention of Emerald Publishing that this precis article contains large sections of unattributed text taken from the original research article “Employee health codes of conduct: what would they look like and who wants to accept them?”, by Rebecca Robbins, Brian Wansink, published in International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Vol. 8 No. 3, 2015.

Precis articles are intended to summarise original academic research articles for a different audience, and should not include verbatim passages from the original articles. This error occurred due to a miscommunication in the commissioning process.

To avoid any repeated incidents of this nature, Emerald has fully revised its guidelines and briefed its Commissioning Editors. Human Resource Management International Digest sincerely apologises to the original authors and its readers for this error. The original article can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-01-2014-0002.

Citation

(2017), "Good health! But whose job is it? Employers’ challenge in ways of wellbeing", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 28-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-10-2016-0132

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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