A recent study has shown that Canadians significantly underestimate the risks to their wellness and wellbeing that a corporate environment can pose. The study showed that employees were severely underestimating personal health risks, and this points towards a need for more targeted wellness programmes in workplaces across the country.
This very recent study looked at the huge inaccuracies in self-reported heart risk factors, and it compared the answers of individual respondents on healthcare questionnaires in the workplace to their actual medical results. Researchers looked at three key areas: cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. By comparing the data, researchers found that employees were significantly underestimating the risks to their personal health.
Almost half of those who took part in the study had at least one very important cardiovascular risk factor that they did not know about. Some of the employees in this category (about 27 percent) were under the age of 35, making the data all the more shocking.
Around 21 percent of respondents were found to have high blood pressure, around 37 percent had high cholesterol levels and around 10 percent had glucose levels that were out with the recommended norms from Health Canada.
The survey looked at 893 employees, and revealed that, when compared to their actual medical test results, the self-reported risk of cholesterol was underestimated by a whopping 250 percent, high blood pressure risk was underestimated by 58 percent and the risk of diabetes was underestimated by 76 percent.
In order to maximise the return on a company’s investment in a wellness programme, employers should make sure that they bring in medical staff as well, to test employees, rather than relying on self reporting, which is clearly inaccurate.
This will help staff to get the most out of their wellness programmes, as they will truly understand the health challenges that they are facing.
