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Abstract
As the workforce ages and occupational sitting increases, more employees are at risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Rising employee health problems lead to increasing health care costs and indirect costs due to work productivity loss. Multifaceted health promotion interventions are being adopted in the workplace for health promotion and disease prevention. Three main factors identified in previous literature to be associated with worksite health program success were employee-level characteristics, organizational characteristics, and program characteristics. The goal of the present study is to investigate how employee- and worksite-level characteristics affect employees desired features of worksite health promotion programs. Cross-sectional online surveys were distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Four hundred full-time employed U.S. Mturk users completed the survey and received a $2 incentive. Data were collected on their intention to participate in different types of programs, employee- and worksite-level characteristics such as worksite social support, work autonomy, physical effort at work, and perceived benefits of worksite health promotion. The findings of study 1 identified co-worker support, work autonomy, physical effort at work, and gender to be common or distinct factors associated with intention to participate in three types of worksite physical activity programs. The findings of study 2 identified supervisor support, perceived benefits of worksite health promotion, and perceived importance of learning health information to be associated with interest in different worksite health topics and intention to participate in two types of conversation-based programs (group discussion and individual consultation). Results also suggested the importance of confidentiality of employees health information, and choosing the optimal conversation-based format for delivering sensitive health topics at worksites. These studies highlighted tailorable strategies for introducing interventions into worksites based on employee and workplace characteristics.