World Heath Day, which is celebrated on April 7 every year, should remind employers to attach greater importance to the health of employees.

In the Towers Watson's 2013/2014 Staying@Work survey, which surveyed 892 organizations around the world, across all major industries, the 85 companies in China viewed their workforce as the least healthy in the Asia-Pacific region. The respondents indicated that on average more than four of the seven risk areas listed were causes for concern in their work force. Lack of physical activity was rated as the most prevalent health risk, 78 percent indicated this is a top risk for their workforce, with stress ranked as a close second, 77 percent.

Yet while over three-quarters of the employers surveyed in China identified stress as a concern, few of them were taking action. The most common tactic used by employers to promote stress management was specialized training for employees, but it was only used by 44 percent; followed by education and awareness campaigns 33 percent, training for managers 29 percent and flexible working options 27 percent. And few employers were making use of existing resources such as their employee assistance programs. Our analysis and experience suggests expanding the EAPs to dependants, and developing a rebranding campaign to remove social barriers and taboo around it are effective best practices.

Similarly, employers ranked tobacco use as the third-biggest risk to their workforce, and this was the highest for the Asia-Pacific, yet China is close to lowest in the region for having tobacco cessation programs: 9 percent compared to 16 percent in India, 8 percent in Singapore and 12 percent in Southeast Asia.

In China, 60 percent of employers believe health and productivity are essential to their organizational health strategy, and the rate should continue to grow - 66 percent expect their organization's support of health and productivity programs to increase over the next two years. However the proportion of employers with no global strategy and no plans to adopt one is overwhelming: 71 percent compared to 30 percent in the Asia-Pacific and 28 percent in the United States; although employers in China have set their sights on changing this. In the next three years, almost half of the respondents, 47 percent, said they aim not only to adopt a formal strategy, but also to communicate it effectively and use it to differentiate themselves from talent competitors.

All countries and sub-regions surveyed in Asia cited inadequate employee engagement as the biggest obstacle to changing employee health behaviour, except those in China, who claimed they had adequate budget and staff to support effective health management programs. However, this discrepancy represents a misperception of what makes for an effective strategy, since our research shows some of the best practices are things that can be done with little or no budget and are not necessarily tangible, such as sponsoring self-managed health and productivity affinity groups, such as running clubs and support groups, crowd sourcing information and feedback to improve programs and making sure health and productivity programs are connected to broader organizational initiatives.

The employers in China revealed a bias towards focusing on more tangible, rather than strategic aspects of health and productivity in the survey. In all other parts of Asia as well as in the US, when it comes to top health and productivity priorities, organization's ranked building a culture of health and employee accountability as their number one aim, whereas in China, employers ranked stress management at the top. While a culture of health may be less tangible and measurable than running specialized programs, it marks the difference between a string of ad-hoc programs and a comprehensive strategy that lasts beyond any one activity.

The second-biggest obstacle identified in China is a lack of evidence on returns of health and productivity programs. This could be considered a self-inflicted challenge - most employers in China do not measure their own programs, making it difficult if not impossible to demonstrate evidence internally over time. While the majority, 66 percent, measure medical claims data on a regular basis, for all other data sources the rates of regular measurement are much lower: 39 percent for employee engagement data, 36 percent for preventative care utilization, 23 percent for unplanned absence data, 22 percent for employee satisfaction with health and productivity programs, 16 percent for participation in health and productivity programs, 13 percent for lifestyle related risk data. It is critical that employers deploy a planned measurement strategy from the outset, since research suggests it takes two to three years for returns to become apparent.

The respondents in China reported using cutting-edge tactics to encourage employee interaction for health and productivity, roughly twice as much as the employers in India, and around 40 percent more than the average in Asia. China leads the region for sponsoring individual or team competitions between business locations or employee groups, with 63 percent of employers doing this compared to 26 percent in India, 29 percent in Singapore and 36 percent in Southeast Asia. China also leads in the use of social media tools, with 33 percent of employers deploying this tactic compared to 16 percent in India, 20 percent in Singapore and 19 percent in Southeast Asia 19 percent. In our analysis these were both seen as distinguishing features of high-effectiveness companies and correlated with attainment of business outcomes.

While organizations in China have expressed a strong focus on health and productivity, currently they have not been successful in matching their actions to their priorities. Responses suggest employers in China conceptualize health and productivity on a more tangible rather than strategic level, and have not tackled the specific health issues their work force face, which has inhibited them from translating interest into outcomes. Nonetheless they have made major headway, and with a focus on creating a more comprehensive and targeted strategy employers in China can build effective programs that show profound human capital and business impacts.

The author is Asia-Pacific director of global health and group benefits at Towers Watson.

(China Daily USA 04/08/2014 page12）