The last few years have seen a significant increase in the number of employee wellbeing programs, with many of these aiming to help employees manage their weight.  Alas, a recent study suggests that many of these programs might do more harm than good.

The study, from the University of Groningen, suggests that by making people feel responsible for their weight, but often powerless to control it, it can lead to increases in weight-related stigma and discrimination.  The best strategy for countering this phenomenon is to focus on the employer’s responsibility to maintain the good health of the workforce.

“Who is responsible for obesity?” the researchers say. “We are often told that it’s someone’s own responsibility, but people tend to forget that the institutions that shape our immediate environment strongly influence our behavior.”

Workplace impact

The report highlights how big an impact our workplace can have on our health, and especially our weight.  As obesity rises throughout the population, many employers are implementing wellness programs to promote healthier lifestyles.  Many of these programs emphasize individual responsibility for our weight however, with little emphasis given to the role the employer plays.

For instance, an employee focused wellness campaign might involve signs placed in the canteen to encourage healthy choices, whereas an employer focused approach might see the canteen only offer healthy options.

The researchers cite previous work into wellness programs that had this employee focus to them, and many achieved negligible results on employee weight.  What’s more, the researchers believe that such programs tend to contribute to weight-related stigma and discrimination in the workplace, which might actually make matters worse.

The team conducted a number of surveys and psychological tests on employees and volunteers to understand their attitude towards weight management initiatives.  The results showed that when people are faced with initiatives from an employee-focused wellness program, weight-related discrimination increases compared to more employer-focused initiatives.

“In general, people judged a woman with obesity in a photo to be lazy, unattractive, slow and as having less will-power compared with a woman without obesity,” the researchers say. “However, this effect became stronger when people had been confronted with concepts from an employee-focused program.”

Sadly, this even seemed to extend to outright discrimination, with people exposed to employee-focused wellness programs much more likely to hire people who weren’t obese than they were to hire people who were.  This seemed to vanish when they were exposed to employer-focused health promotion campaigns.

Catch 22

This left over weight people in a catch-22 scenario whenever they were exposed to employee-focused programs, as it often left them feeling totally responsible for their weight, but equally powerless to control it.  This dichotomy didn’t appear during employer-focused programs.

The findings underline the challenges inherent in developing programs that not only help people to live a healthier lifestyle, but also encourage the whole organization to make ethical decisions and generally behave the right way.

“When developing a health program, organizations should not solely focus on employee responsibility, but should look at what the organization can do to bring about healthy behavior,” the authors conclude.