It is time for Corporate Health Management to change its direction
When reading German publications on the topic of health management, one gets the impression that Germany is in a desolate mental health condition due to illness-inducing working conditions. Books, professional journals, guides, and information brochures focus on "stress," "mental strain," "burnout," and other disorders. Mental illnesses are said to be on the rise, and the burnout syndrome is said to be widespread. However, the results published by the Robert Koch Institute in the "Health Report Germany" at the end of 2015 show otherwise. According to the report, only 1.1% of men and 1.9% of women in Germany suffer from burnout syndrome. Furthermore, mental illnesses have not increased from the past decades to the present day. Therefore, mental disorders are a problem that can be largely neglected when comparing their occurrence with behavior-related health risks.
Health is not a private matter
56% of women and 60% of men in Germany have lipid metabolism disorders, 53% of women and 67% of men are overweight, and a third of each group has high blood pressure as a result of poor health behavior. These results from the Robert Koch Institute are not surprising. Only 20% of Germans manage to incorporate the minimal necessary amount of physical activity into their daily lives to remain healthy and productive in the long term. Even fewer people manage to consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables per day. With each individual risk factor a worker exhibits, work performance is reduced by an average of 2.4%. Conversely, productivity could be increased by 1.9% with each risk factor that is eliminated. Despite the proven importance of health behavior for individuals and for a company's productivity, the focus in Corporate Health Management is often on working conditions. The reduction of mental hazards and illnesses seems to be the main areas of action in CHM. This neglects the development of innovative solutions to improve employees' health literacy, which is the most effective lever for personal health and company productivity. Despite extensive health offerings, only those already fit in the company are reached. The desired effect on the health behavior of all employees is not achieved. This is not surprising either. For many companies, "self-responsibility" is still considered a private matter.
The Future: Entrepreneurial Health Management
To tap into untapped potentials lying in lifestyle improvements, a departure from the misguided path of traditional Corporate Health Management is a necessary prerequisite. Moving away from a passive, problem-oriented health management approach towards empowering employees and fostering a culture of self-responsibility is the path to a modern "Entrepreneurial Health Management" that promises effectiveness and sustainability.
What does this mean for companies?
- Companies must stop investing in useless and ineffective offerings that only the already fit utilize. Fruit baskets, gyms, back courses, and the like are nice and enhance employer attractiveness, but they have nothing to do with an effective and economically viable health management that reaches all employees and brings benefits not only to the individual but also to the company: namely, increased performance.
- Companies should remember that they alone are not responsible for ensuring that employees are healthy and productive. This image is continuously propagated, but it is one-sided, outdated, and not future-oriented.
- Companies must believe in the positive, effective aspects of Corporate Health Management. They must be courageous, demand self-responsibility from employees, and trust that employees will appreciate this paradigm shift. They develop competencies that finally enable the changes they desire for themselves.
- Companies must be critical when engaging external partners for shaping their Corporate Health Management. Improving health behavior is not a task that can be solved in standard works on Corporate Health Management, at universities, or in further education on Corporate Health Management. Experts are needed who understand habit formation and know how to systematically improve health behavior in companies through cultural change and breaking taboos. Health management should not only look good internally and externally but also generate real change that can be measured.
- The leadership task of health must start with the company's management. Only when they actively demonstrate and demand self-responsibility can employees improve their health behavior. Passively hoping for changes in health behavior through health offerings is not sufficient if prevention is to be effectively and economically pursued.
Empowering Employees for Self-Responsibility
The reasons why Corporate Health Management in Germany still does not reflect the recommendations of an "entrepreneurial health management" as described above can only be speculated. On the one hand, according to science, there is a negative bias apparent in research on work and organizational psychology, which is also reflected in health management measures revolving around disorders and illnesses. On the other hand, past and present absenteeism statistics are repeatedly misinterpreted, a nonexistent increase in mental illnesses is propagated, and this is attributed to poor working conditions due to unscientific conclusions. Attempts to blame the cause of burnout syndrome on working conditions fail miserably when evidence-based studies are considered. There is a suspicion that emotionalizing the topic of "burnout" is intended to help suppress experienced helplessness and reluctance to take responsibility for one's own health. Instead, the focus should be on the truly significant influencing factors, and employees should be made more independent of companies' actions or inactions regarding health by fostering more self-responsibility. Empowering employees to take responsibility for their own health should therefore be the most important task of health management in companies.
