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Workplace Wellness Programs Successfully Encourage Employee Activity


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January 21, 2009

A study in the February American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggests that workplace-sponsored exercise programs successfully motivate employees to regularly participate in moderate or vigorous physical activity, HealthDay News reports. To evaluate worker response to employer-sponsored fitness programs, University of Georgia researchers tracked changes among 1,442 Home Depot employees participating in Move to Improve, a three-month fitness program that encourages workers to set individual and team fitness goals, providing incentives for achieving benchmarks. When the program launched, approximately 30 percent of participants reported regularly engaging in moderate to vigorous activity. However, after six weeks, 51 percent of participants weekly logged at least five 30-minute moderate exercise sessions, or two to three 20-minute sessions of vigorous exercise. By contrast, only 25 percent of employees who did not participate in the program logged comparable exercise sessions. Noting that the program retained most of its original participants, the researchers speculate that the group-oriented nature of the program inspired participants to continue progressing toward goals, helping to reduce dropout rates. Meanwhile, an assistant professor at Michigan State University suggests the program may have been successful because the workplace provides a captive audience, adding that this particular program may have proved successful because it offered incentives and personal and team goal setting that are not typical of workplace wellness programs.

Copyright 2009 The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation http://www.rwjf.org
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care.


Contact Information

Mark G. Wilson, PhD
(706)542-4364 (voice)
(706)542-4956 (fax)
mwilson@uga.edu

David M. DeJoy
(706)542-4368 (voice)
(706)542-4956 (fax)
dmdejoy@uga.edu



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