Employees’ healthy eating and physical activity: the role of colleague encouragement and behaviour

Background: Exercising and eating healthy are not just an individual choice, but influenced by family members, friends, or neighbours. Little is known, however, about colleagues, who are another important interpersonal influence. Many people spend many hours at work, surrounded by mostly the same colleagues, who could therefore significantly shape employees’ (un)healthy choices. We studied to what extent colleagues may play a part in one another’s eating and exercise behaviours by focusing on two pathways: colleagues can encourage a healthy lifestyle or act as role models whose behaviours can be observed and copied. Methods: We used the European Sustainable Workforce Survey, with data on 4345 employees in 402 teams in 113 organisations. We used network autocorrelation models, which resemble regression models, to study to what extent employee encouragement is related to fruit and vegetable consumption, and physical activity. Specific to this type of model is the inclusion of a network correlation parameter which allows for the outcome of an employee to be directly associated with the outcomes of their colleagues. In this way we tested whether colleagues’ behaviours were related to one another. Results: We found that employees were more likely to eat fruit and vegetables as well as engage in physical activity when their colleagues encourage a healthy lifestyle. Employees’ healthy eating behaviours were positively related to their colleagues’ fruit and vegetable consumption, while we found a negative correlation concerning physical activity. Conclusion: Overall, colleagues’ encouragement and own healthy behaviours have the potential to contribute to creating a culture of health in the workplace and support all employees in making healthy choices

Worksite health promotion for employees working from home: A vignette experiment examining intentions to participate

This study explores which factors affect employees' intention to participate in worksite health promotion (WHP) when they work from home. Employees increasingly work from home, yet existing WHP is mainly tied to the workplace. We lack knowledge on what might stimulate employees to make use of WHP specifically when they work from home. Drawing on the theory of reasoned action, we studied whether type of activity, duration, if WHP takes place during work time, how often employees work from home (shaping employees' attitude) and colleague participation (social norms) explain employees' intention to participate in WHP when working from home. To do so, we employed a vignette experiment. Results show that employees' intentions are higher for walking and taking breaks than for an online sports class. Moreover, intentions are higher for shorter activities and when participating in WHP can be done during work time. The more colleagues participate, the higher intentions of employees to do so too. By offering WHP for employees at home, employers can promote employees' health even when these are not present in the workplace. Our study provides leads into how employers may create conditions under which employees use WHP when working from home

The CTSA Consortium's Catalog of Assets for Translational and Clinical Health Research (CATCHR)

The 61 CTSA Consortium sites are home to valuable programs and infrastructure supporting translational science and all are charged with ensuring that such investments translate quickly to improved clinical care. Catalog of Assets for Translational and Clinical Health Research (CATCHR) is the Consortium's effort to collect and make available information on programs and resources to maximize efficiency and facilitate collaborations. By capturing information on a broad range of assets supporting the entire clinical and translational research spectrum, CATCHR aims to provide the necessary infrastructure and processes to establish and maintain an open‐access, searchable database of consortium resources to support multisite clinical and translational research studies. Data are collected using rigorous, defined methods, with the resulting information made visible through an integrated, searchable Web‐based tool. Additional easy‐to‐use Web tools assist resource owners in validating and updating resource information over time. In this paper, we discuss the design and scope of the project, data collection methods, current results, and future plans for development and sustainability. With increasing pressure on research programs to avoid redundancy, CATCHR aims to make available information on programs and core facilities to maximize efficient use of resources.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106893/1/cts12144.pd

The CTSA Consortium's Catalog of Assets for Translational and Clinical Health Research (CATCHR): The Ctsa Consortium's Catchr

The 61 CTSA Consortium sites are home to valuable programs and infrastructure supporting translational science and all are charged with ensuring that such investments translate quickly to improved clinical care. CATCHR (Catalog of Assets for Translational and Clinical Health Research) is the Consortium’s effort to collect and make available information on programs and resources to maximize efficiency and facilitate collaborations. By capturing information on a broad range of assets supporting the entire clinical and translational research spectrum, CATCHR aims to provide the necessary infrastructure and processes to establish and maintain an open-access, searchable database of consortium resources to support multi-site clinical and translational research studies. Data is collected using rigorous, defined methods, with the resulting information made visible through an integrated, searchable web-based tool. Additional easy to use web tools assist resource owners in validating and updating resource information over time. In this article, we discuss the design and scope of the project, data collection methods, current results, and future plans for development and sustainability. With increasing pressure on research programs to avoid redundancy, CATCHR aims to make available information on programs and core facilities to maximize efficient use of resources

Worksite health promotion protects older employees' health

Steeds meer werkgevers ontwikkelen beleid om werknemers te stimuleren gezond te eten en meer te bewegen. Dit geldt ook voor oudere werknemers: zij ondervinden dat de ouderdom met minder gebreken komt wanneer ze gebruik maken van vitaliteitsregelingen. Toch hebben oudere werknemers in Europa minder toegang tot dit beleid en maken zij er minder vaak gebruik van wanneer zij daar wel de mogelijkheid toe hebben

Agape in the Workplace. A Survey Among Medium and Large Dutch Companies

The concepts of love and business do not seem to match very well, despite attempts to operationalize love as agape or neighborly love. In line with the emerging literature, this contribution uses a profane and analytical approach to agape as an ‘Agenda for Growth and Affirmation of People and the Environment’. Within this agenda we define agape as ‘the commitment to the well-being and flourishing of others’ and operationalized it to measure the concept in a substantial sample of 420 medium-sized and large companies in The Netherlands. At the core of the research lies the question whether and to what extent companies, represented by senior managers and members of the works council, are committed to the well-being of their employees. This article analyses the concept of agape and its application in a business context and presents the results of a survey. The results show that, on average, respondents report that their organization is committed to employees’ well-being in line with the organization’s values. Though not the aim of agape, since organizations that apply the concept reap tangible business benefits from it, the concept becomes suitable to a wider range of businesses

Gezond thuiswerken (working from home healthily)

The research project Gezond thuiswerken (working from home healthily) of Utrecht University aimed to study the health and well-being of Dutch employees that worked from home during the covid-19 pandemic. To stop the spread of infections, the Dutch government advised employees to work from home as much as possible during the data collection period (March-July 2021). As a result, many employees worked from home for the majority of their working hours, while before March 2020 only a small group of employees worked from home and for a limited number of hours. For many employees, the switch to working from home was large, and this research project tried to gain more insight into how employees experienced this new situation. A second important aim of the project was to study in which ways employers can stimulate the health and well-being of their employees when these work from home. Many organisations offer worksite health promotion activities, but these are mostly connected to the workplace. When employees work from home, they cannot participate in these activities, so that both employees and employers cannot benefit from the alleged positive effects worksite health promotion has. The research project Working from home healthily therefore also studied which activities employees would be willing to participate in when working from home, and which factors influence this willingness, by using a survey experiment

Colleagues affect healthy eating and exercise behavior

Exercising and eating healthy are not just an individual choice, but influenced by the social environment. Family members, friends or neighbors influence (un)healthy choices individuals make, yet little is known about other important contacts: colleagues. Many people spend at least 8 hours a day at work, mostly surrounded by the same colleagues. As a third of daily calories are consumed in the workplace and a lot of time is spent sitting there, colleagues could be important in shaping the (un)healthy choices employees make. We study to what extent colleagues influence each other's eating and exercise behavior. We focus on two pathways: colleagues can encourage a healthy lifestyle or act as role models whose behavior can be observed and copied. We use the European Sustainable Workforce Survey, with data on 4345 employees in 402 teams in 113 organizations. We measured healthy eating as how often employees eat fruit and vegetables. We measured exercise by the number of days in the past week employees did sports/physical activity for more than 30 minutes. Colleague encouragement was assessed by the extent to which employees said their colleagues encourage them to eat healthy food or exercise frequently. We computed colleague behavior by taking the average fruit and vegetable consumption, and exercise, of all colleagues in a team. We fitted multilevel models with employees nested in teams and controlled for gender, age, education, working hours, job physical demands, self-rated health, sector and country. Preliminary results show colleague encouragement for healthy eating positively affected fruit consumption (p<.01), colleague fruit consumption did not(p=.62). Both colleague encouragement (p<.01) and colleague vegetable consumption (p=.04) positively relate to vegetable consumption. Colleague encouragement positively (p=.03), and colleague exercise behavior (p<.01) negatively, affected exercise. Worksite health interventions should emphasize the role colleagues may play. Key messages Next to family, friends and neighbors, also colleagues influence each other’s eating and exercise behavior. Worksite health interventions should the role colleagues may play into account when attempting to improve employee health