Angela M Downey
University of Lethbridge
David J. Sharp
University of Western Ontario
Abstract: Although there is extensive evidence that workplace health promotion (HP) programs reduce healthcare benefit costs and improve employee productivity, most of this evidence is from the US, where health care costs are largely borne by employers, who therefore enjoy the full benefit of the cost savings generated. In many countries, however, a large proportion of healthcare costs are borne by the state. While the full benefits of HP are still created, they are shared between employers and the state, even though the employer bears the full (after-tax) cost. The employer therefore has a lower incentive to implement HP activity.
If the cost of health-care in a publicly funded environment is to be reduced by workplace HP activity, understanding the motivation of decision-makers directly responsible for allocating resources to HP is important. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of the attitudes of three separate management groups (controllers, senior management, and human resource managers) towards the cost and other consequences of increasing discretionary spending on HP, using Structural Equation Modeling and the Theory of Planned Behavior.
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