Study shows your boss can influence your health!

Zee Media Bureau

New York: It is a known fact that managers have a huge influence on employees' behaviour. They also play a huge role in creating the best work environment – from helping a new employee get settled in a job to getting other employees meet their deadlines.

Now, a new study finds that manager leadership may be the key to employee health programs and goals, suggesting that they be provided with incentives to focus on creating a healthier work environment.

"Instead of focusing on individual wellness outcomes, we propose that it would be more effective if managers were incentivised to create healthier overall work environments with simple, easy to implement actions such as installing a water cooler, providing healthy snacks at meetings, and encouraging work/life balance," said lead author Rebecca Robbins from Cornell University in New York, US.

The initiative requires tapping into the manager`s ability to lead his or her team to wellness and can, as a result, have a big payoff in terms of creating a culture of health at the workplace, and could tip the scales toward healthier employees.

The study surveyed 270 adults with manager roles and found that 68 percent supported the idea of being evaluated by their employee wellness actions.

The study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, finds that increase in employee wellness and motivation can be achieved by tying just 10 percent of managerial salary increases to health initiatives.

(With IANS inputs)