Working Towards Wellness

Organisations have a unique and vital role in improving the wellness, health and physical fitness of employees not only in the developed world but also around the globe, particularly in those countries where increasing rates of chronic disease will take an increasing toll.

Objectives
• Catalyse high-level commitments to advance workplace wellness initiatives across multiple business sectors and from multiple stakeholders
• Facilitate collaboration between stakeholders in the battle against chronic disease
• Generate expert insights and spread best practices on how to create and monitor an effective workplace health programme

Latest Report
The 61st World Health Assembly will be the occasion for discussion of the World Health Organisation's global action plan on non-communicable diseases.
Over the past year the World Economic Forum has collaborated with the World Health Organisation to investigate a potential solution - workplace wellness programmes - and concluded that these are a real yet under-exploited opportunity requiring a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach. The full release of the “Preventing Noncommunicable Diseases in the Workplace through Diet and Physical Activity” (PDF) report took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 19 May 2008.

The Workplace as a Health Promotion Setting
Workplace health promotion (WHP) programmes, targeting physical inactivity and unhealthy dietary habits, are effective in improving health-related outcomes such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk factors. Enhancing employee productivity, improving corporate image and moderating medical care costs are some of the arguments that might foster senior management to initiate and invest in WHP programmes. Unhealthy diets and excessive energy intake, physical inactivity and tobacco use are major risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In 2005, an estimated 35 million people died of NCDs such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. Around 80% of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries that also have to deal with the burden of infectious diseases, maternal and perinatal conditions and nutritional deficiencies.

Working Towards Wellness at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, January 2008
During a high-level meeting of leaders from business, government and civil society, sixteen CEOs and leaders made a call to action (PDF) to raise employee health on the corporate agenda. Participants focused on the “how” not the “why”, with exciting commitments for the year by organizations such as Best Buy, World Heart Federation, Nestlé, Pitney Bowes and the Harvard School of Public Health.  Participants reviewed cutting edge thinking from the BT Group, Right Management (a Manpower Company), PricewaterhouseCoopers and The NHS Institute.

Summary of Key Conclusions - download PDF of summary
Business Rationale (prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers)
Measuring Change (prepared by Right Management, a Manpower Company)
Practical Steps (prepared by BT Group)
Global Examples (prepared by The NHS Institute and containing case studies of wellness programmes at Dow Chemical, Eskom, Discovery Holdings, Becton Dickinson)

Deliverables in 2007
• A joint report with the World Health Organization, outlining steps that stakeholders can take to develop, implement and monitor chronic disease prevention programmes in the workplace
• A report on the business rationale for workplace wellness, demonstrating the quantifiable potential economic savings at national and business level and the logic behind action
• A synthesis and evaluation of current  workplace wellness measurement tools, outlining examples of current systems used globally to meaasure  employee health and  systems used globally to measure employee health and proposing a best practice measurement framework
• A set of practical steps CEOs can take, laying out an example of “how to”, the lessons learned and subsequent proposals for a broader range of stakeholders
• A series of examples of wellness schemes from around the world, highlighting current examples of wellness programmes targeting key risk factors for chronic disease

Upcoming Events
• India Economic Summit, New Delhi, India, 15-16 November 2008

Contacts
For more information on Working Towards Wellness, please contact us at workingtowardswellness@weforum.org