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Abstract
Economic evaluations of workforce well-being programs (WWPs) typically focus on return on investment (ROI) analyses to demonstrate that WWPs generate financial savings through reduced health care costs or improved labor productivity. Although the outcomes considered by WWP evaluations should be linked to businesses’ strategies to provide policy-relevant evidence, there are not empirical studies linking companies’ stated reasons for adopting WWPs to their choice of specific programming. This study used a large convenience sample of employer survey data to empirically link companies’ stated reasons for adopting WWPs to specific program implementation choices. In so doing, it analyzed the assumption that financial savings drive the adoption of WWPs and provides evidence of the extent to which ROI expectations drive WWP adoption. Our findings provide evidence that ROI is not necessarily the main objective of companies implementing WWPs and the current state of the literature does not align the evaluation metric with true company values, strategic objectives, and characteristics.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Albert N. Link, PhD, of the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and Michael Pittard, MFA, of the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Greensboro for their valuable contribution to the preparation of this article.
Declaration of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.
Disclosure statement of funding
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
* This article is originally a chapter from PhD thesis “Three Essays of Evaluating Effectiveness of Workplace Wellness Programs Unsal (Citation2018) by Nilay Unsal.