BUS301: Human Resource Management

In the past three decades, US employers have reported that budgets for healthcare costs have been at double-digit annual growth rates and incompatible with sustainable business strategies. This steep rise in healthcare spending has changed the role of the employer from passively purchasing services for the treatment of disease to actively engaging in programs and benefit plan designs in attempts to control unnecessary healthcare expenses. More specifically, employers have redirected their efforts at population health management and incorporating wellness and disease prevention programs to control healthcare costs. Wellness programs have become among the most commonly practiced business strategies. However, with regards to wellness research, given that wellness is regarded as part of social marketing to promote healthy behaviors such as physical exercise or healthy eating and to improve people's lives, scholars in social marketing have mainly focused on the studies of wellness from the perspective of social welfare  and community campaigns. There have been a limited number of studies that have examined this subject from the perspective of corporate gains and the provision of innovative wellness programs for better effects on employees. 

High-tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook are famous for employee benefits and wellness programs, which help make them attractive places to work. For example, at Google, employees are able to take showers, receive massages, and do laundry during their work time. Leisure facilities such as ping-pong tables, Lego stations, and nap pods are available in the office. Google employees enjoy unlimited healthy food provided by the company and receive incentives and bonuses if they choose a healthy lifestyle. Similar to Google, other high-tech companies like Facebook, SAS, have been investing large sums to innovate and improve their employee wellness programs, which in turn accelerates work productivity and job satisfaction. As such, many high-tech corporations are known as Best Companies to Work For as listed by Health Fitness Revolution. 

On the other hand, hospitality enterprises including chain restaurants and hotels strive for excellency of service for their customers - a goal that is highly dependent on the performance of their employees. However, many studies have shown that hospitality and service employees work in constantly changing work environments, which poses tremendous challenges to their health and wellness. Therefore, employee wellness programs play an important role in improving an employees' job performance in hospitality workplaces. Additionally, the nature of hospitality jobs is different from that of the typical corporate work environment. For instance, front desk clerks and food servers need to stand for nearly eight hours on their shifts. Housekeeping staff need to stay up late if they are assigned to a night shift. Hospitality workers' physical and psychological health can be affected by the shift work and long-time standing requirements, resulting in disrupted sleep patterns, stomach trouble, and mental stress. 

Research has shown that corporations have gained many benefits from implementing successful employee wellness programs, including enhanced employee engagement. Engaged employees are able to provide a higher quality of service for customers, which in turn generates higher customer satisfaction and loyalty to the company. In addition, employee wellness programs can reduce healthcare expenditures for companies. Although recognizing benefits from the provision of employee wellness programs - healthy and fit staff are able to handle stress better and become more productive in their work and more engaged with their companies - companies encounter challenges when they are developing their company's version of a wellness programs. 

According to Borenstein, many wellness programs suffer from low participation levels. Only 40 percent of employees who are aware of the wellness program say they actually participate in it. Limitations of time, a lack motivation to do fitness activities, and privacy (not wanting colleagues and senior managers around when doing exercise) are among the main factors for these low participation levels. Therefore, identifying effective and plausible employee wellness programs for hospitality enterprises could be a critical task to drive employee engagement and consequently improve overall service quality and better customer relationships. This paper aims to review the effective and successful wellness programs offered in high-tech corporations, compare them with existing programs in some well-known hospitality units, and ultimately to make suggestions for improvements and innovations to employee wellness programs for better participation and positive effect among the hospitality workforce.