Employee Wellness Without Stress and Strain

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the human race has entered the era of hope and transformation, and there is growing pressure and focus to raise awareness to adopt alternative interventions and sustainable practices to ensure gaining sound functioning of physiological organs. Can yoga and meditation promote clarity in thoughts and enhance alertness at work? Does practice of mudras help in improving concentration level of individuals? Do yoga and meditation help to improve the improve quality of life in general? The aim of this chapter is to help new practitioners, scholars, and employees to understand fitness mantra without stress and strain through Indian style of yoga and meditation. This chapter presents an overview of collection of research papers and articles written by yoga experts, saints, and researchers that have emphasized psychology, spirituality, and mentioned evidence for better mental health or effectiveness of yoga, meditation, and mudra interventions as tools for improving the overall personality and mental health of individuals.

Appraising the Future of Employee Health and Wellness Programmes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Employee wellness is an important aspect of human resource management system that has to be considered in the various phases of industrial revolution. It should be noted that during the industrial revolutions work has been transformed from handmade methods to machines. Work productivity improved, yet at the same time the number for those required for manual labour slightly reduced. In each of the revolutions the need to maintain employees remained significant. Therefore, it becomes imperative in the 4th industrial revolution even though managed heavily by machinery and technology to continue with employee wellness for effective productivity within organisations going forward. This chapter will deal with the employee wellness as a strategy that deals with enabling employee welfare. A healthy workforce enhances employee wellness.

Would Organizational Climate and Job Stress Affect Wellness? An Empirical Study on the Hospitality Industry in Taiwan during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitality employees face a tremendous amount of job stress due to the decline in revenue and close contact with people. This study has three aims: first, to analyse the status quo of organizational-climate job stress on employee wellness in the hospitality industry during COVID-19; second, to discuss the correlation between organizational-climate job stress and employee wellness in the hospitality industry; and third, to analyze the associations between of personal background and organizational climate on job stress and wellness in the hospitality industry. This research uses a survey method to examine these issues. Participants were employees of franchise hotel branches in Taipei City, which yielded 295 effective sample sizes from five chain hotels. The personal background factor questionnaire, organizational climate questionnaire, job stress questionnaire, and wellness questionnaire served as the main research tools. In this study, Factor analysis, Pearson Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis were used for sample analysis. The results revealed a significant relationship between organizational-climate job stress with wellness. Personal background factors, organizational climate, and job stress would affect the wellness of employees. As a result, the present research provides empirical evidence for the impact of organizational climate and job stress on employee wellness in the hospitality industry in Taiwan during COVID-19. The study’s findings, as well as its theoretical and practical implications, are discussed. The main contribution of this study is that the results serve as a reference for hospitality business owners to design better organizational environments for their employees, plan human-resource-related strategies, and provide training for their employees during a pandemic.

IoT based Employee Wellness Program

Owing to globalization, employees spend 60-70% of their time in their offices hence they offer an important venue for influencing dietary behaviour of employees [1, 3]. With the increased technology and usage of sensors, the application of Internet based smart health monitoring has emerged at a greater pace. Internet of Things (IoT) is the new revolution which is the growing research area especially in the health care domain [7]. The current work presents a methodology that links the employee health to risk factors such as diet and physical activity and provides an exclusive diet plan to each employee through IoT enabled devices and network. A portable IoT enabled weighing scale setup was constructed using a Bench scale RSL 601AC Load Cell, Load Cell Amplifier HX711, Node MCU, RF ID and card reader to record the employee data & upload it to cloud. A .NET application was developed to download the data from the cloud and determine the BMI of an employee and the corresponding calories to be consumed and expended in a day. Taking into account the calories to be consumed and the diet preferences, the application then constructs a diet plan and sends it across to the employees and generates weekly statistical data of BMI to guide and monitor the overall fitness of the employees. Keywords: Dietary behaviour, BMI, Internet of Things (IoT), Diet plan, Fitness

Employee perceptions of wellness programs in the hospitality industry

Purpose This study aims to examine the impacts of employee wellness programs on employee and organizational outcomes in the hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach A survey was distributed on Amazon Mechanical Turk, targeting hospitality employees who have access to employee wellness programs. Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques were used. Findings Employee perceptions of wellness programs significantly impacted turnover intention, job stress (JS) and perceived organizational support (POS). POS had a significant mediating effect between employee perceptions of wellness programs and JS. Employee perceptions of wellness programs did not have a significant effect on emotional labor. Originality/value Employee wellness programs are often recommended to human resource managers, but there is little empirical evidence of their effects, particularly for hospitality industry employees. This study investigates the actual employee outcomes of employer-sponsored wellness programs.

310 Outcomes of a Sleep and Stress-Focused Employee Wellness Program

Introduction The Sleep More, Stress Less Program (SMSL) is a University of Alabama (UA) employee wellness program designed to help participants implement health behavior changes to improve sleep quality and stress management. Workplace wellness programs offer a win-win for the employee and employer through improved health and reduced absenteeism. However, many programs fail to show effectiveness on health and workplace metrics, even with an increase in targeted health behaviors. This may be due—at least in part—to employee self-selection and data collection limitations. The SMSL program addresses these challenges by recruiting employees experiencing sleep and stress issues and using a rigorous assessment approach that records data on behavior changes, process goals, intermediate mechanisms, and health outcomes. We present findings from the SMSL program evaluation conducted Fall 2020. Methods The SMSL program is delivered online with both synchronous and asynchronous content (videos and exercises). The content combines evidence-based interventions for sleep and stress with the science of behavioral motivation. All adult (19–99 years) UA employees were eligible and recruitment occurred through the WellBama website and employee emails. Employees are encouraged to select programs that match their health issues. Participants complete an online pre-program assessment and track their sleep and stress for one week. Next, participants complete the SMSL educational program over the next three weeks. In the fifth week, participants track their sleep and stress and complete the online post-program assessment. Results 60 of the initial 85 participants completed all assessments (70.5%). Participants were primarily Female (79%) and Caucasian (77%) or Black (15%), and aged 24–68 (m=44) years. Moderate improvements were reported in total sleep time, sleep maintenance, and time to return to sleep after awakening. Similar improvements were observed in stress scores. Qualitative evaluation of participant behavior goals revealed a focus on sleep scheduling, stimulus reduction, and relaxation. Conclusion Employee wellness program evaluation is often affected by selection and measurement bias. The SMSL program targeted individuals experiencing stress and/or sleep problems and measured multiple outcomes to identify benefits over the 5-week program. Other wellness programs would benefit from this approach in order to capture true program outcomes. Support (if any) N/A

Prevalence and characteristics of campus-based employee wellness programs among United States accredited colleges and universities

BACKGROUND: Employee wellness programs (EWPs) aim to support positive changes in employees’ modifiable behavioral health risk factors for disease prevention and management. OBJECTIVE: This study described the prevalence and characteristics of EWPs in US accredited college and university campuses. METHODS: Identification of the prevalence of EWPs and programming activities offered in 3039 accredited higher education institutions/campuses, and characteristics of these institutions/campuses were conducted, mainly through searching the institution’s web page. RESULTS: Overall, 36%of the institutions/campuses offered EWPs, with a significantly larger percentage of 4-year public colleges/universities providing EWPs and wellness programming activities than the 4-year private colleges/universities and community colleges. When limiting the institutions/campuses to 4-year colleges and universities with at least 500 employees, the percentage of these institutions/campuses offering EWPs increased to 57.7%, which was comparable to the findings in the literature. The percentage of the institutions/campuses offering wellness programming activities ranged from 18.1%for injury prevention and ergonomics to 30.2%for stress management. The percentage of institutions/campuses offering injury prevention and ergonomics was significantly lower than the percentage of institutions/campuses offering other typical wellness activities. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of EWPs offered in accredited college and university campuses do not meet the national goal of 75%, which was set by Healthy People 2010.

Pilot Feasibility Study of Incorporating Whole Person Care Health Coaching Into an Employee Wellness Program

Prior research supports positive health coaching outcomes, but there is limited literature on the integration of employer-sponsored health coaching into employee wellness strategy. The aim of our mixed methods study was to assess feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of incorporating a whole-person care model of health coaching into an employee wellness program (i.e., weight loss, smoking cessation) that is made available by an employer-sponsored health plan. For the quantitative study, eligible employees and covered spouses (n = 39) from Loma Linda University Health were recruited into a novel, 12-week, whole person care intervention that combined health coaching and health education and examined outcomes from surveys detailing the participants' experience and biometric data from the intervention and maintenance periods. For the qualitative study, data were collected through key informant interviews from three health coaches and six intervention participants who were recruited via random sampling. Health coaching was well-received by the participants, and led to a slight albeit positive behavioral change for obesity. A significant decrease in body mass index occurred over 12 weeks of intervention (−0.36 kg/m2, p = 0.016), that did not continue during the maintenance phase (−0.17 kg/m2, p = 0.218). Qualitative findings indicated improved personal health awareness, accountability, motivation, and self-efficacy along with goal setting and barrier overcoming skills among the key themes. Our pilot study findings identify positive behavior change effects of an employee health intervention based on a whole person care model of health coaching with integrated health education, and also identify the need for methods to maintain behavior change (i.e., mHealth, peer-support) post-intervention. Further investigation in randomized controlled trials is the next step in this research.