Organizational Supports and Developing a Healthy Workforce: A Case Study of Wellness Factors and Leadership

Literature Review

The primary literature on the CDC Worksite Health Scorecard (HSC) is the article from a team at Emory University, which tested the reliability and validity of the HSC (CDC, 2014). The Emory study tested the original HSC at 93 worksites, examining question responses and conducting interviews to refine the instrument for general distribution (CDC, 2014). The purpose of the HSC is to serve as an assessment tool for employers to examine their health promotion programs, to identify gaps, and to develop an effective strategy to implement interventions that address heart-disease, stroke, and related chronic conditions. The conclusion of the Emory testing was that their revised version of the HSC “represents one of the few current, comprehensive, and evidence-based worksite tools that have undergone reliability and validity testing and are publicly available for addressing a significant and growing need confronting America’s business community” (CDC, 2014).

Other literature referencing the CDC’s HSC either mentions the HSC in passing or focuses on a very narrow group. As stated previously, the HSC itself has been cited by 10 authors in scholarly work. The most popularly cited work that references the HSC is a response to the question “Do Workplace Health Promotion (Wellness) Programs Work?” This journal article from 2014 in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine is a compilation of three decades of evidence on the effectiveness of workplace programs and a review of recent studies that question wellness program results (CDC, 2016). One textbook, Corporate Wellness Programs: Linking Employee and Organizational Health, explores the topic of achieving financial success for the company through employee health (Richardsen & Burke, 2014). It is a thorough study on the financial results of wellness programs but does not go into the HSC in-depth.