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The purpose of this study is to determine results of an environmental approach to improving employee health status in a government employer setting.

This is an observational study of one worksite and its employees from 2005 to 2007. Environmental interventions were part of the worksite environment, accessible, and applicable to employees regardless of health status. Outcomes were: change in the worksite environment using the Heart Check assessment, change in employee health risks using health risk appraisals (HRAs) and change in hours of sick time. The eligible population included active employees from 2005 to 2007 (n=2,276).

The Heart Check score increased by 26 percentage points. Despite aging of HRA participants, results showed maintenance of risk status with a non‐significant increase in percent at low risk (51.6 percent to 53.1 percent). Percent at high risk had a non‐significant decrease (21.1 percent to 20.2 percent). The three‐month average for hours of sick time decreased from 12.7 to 11.6 hours (p=0.03) for the larger eligible population.

This paper offers qualitative information for others seeking to implement population‐based health promotion interventions. This particular setting presented challenges related to union and non‐union regulations, sub‐contractors, and multiple administrative levels. Quantitatively, change of health risks and absenteeism serves as a reference to others engaging in workplace health promotion.

The goal of this review is to present the literature which provides evidence of the association between health risks and the workplace economic measures of time away from work, reduced productivity at work, health care costs and pharmaceutical costs.

A search of PubMed was conducted which combined the keyword search terms “health risks” with “health costs”, “pharmaceutical costs”, “absenteeism”, “productivity”, “workers compensation”, and “presenteeism”. High quality studies were selected and combined with studies known to the authors.

A strong body of evidence exists which shows that health risks of employees are associated with health care costs and pharmaceutical costs. A growing body of literature also confirms that health risks are associated with the productivity measures of time away from work, workers' compensation, absenteeism and presenteeism. Furthermore, studies have shown that changes in risks are associated with changes in health care costs, time‐away‐from‐work and presenteeism.

The paper shows that measures of success will continue to be important as the field of worksite health management moves forward. Research needs to progress beyond simple associations to the evaluation of changes in costs, trends and transitions over time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational support for employee health (OSEH) and employees’ turnover intention and job performance, with a focus on the possible mediating roles of affective commitment and wellness program participation in these relationships.

Data were collected from surveys of employees at a public university that provides employees with a variety of wellness program options. Conditional procedural analysis was conducted to test the model.

Results showed that employees’ perceptions of OSEH positively related to both turnover intention and job performance and that affective commitment fully mediated the relationships between OSEH perceptions and both dependent variables.

Cross-sectional data were collected on OSEH, affective commitment, employees’ intent to remain in the organization and job performance. Future studies based on panel data would be helpful to establish the causal relationships in the model.

Our findings show that employees’ perceptions of OSEH are likely to affect behavioral outcomes through affective commitment, suggesting that managers should ensure that employees are aware of organizational support for health promotion. Our findings also suggest that organizations move beyond a focus on design of wellness programs to include an emphasis on the overall OSEH.

This research study is the first empirical examination on the two possible channels through which organizational health support may influence employees’ intent to remain and job performance – participation in wellness programs and affective organizational commitment. The results are of value to researchers, human resource management managers, employees and executives who are seeking to develop practices that promote employee health at the workplace.