STAR-VITAL, a Four Year Comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion Program: Study Design

Abstract

Background: Premature death, chronic disease, and productivity loss can be reduced with the help of programs that promote a healthy lifestyle. Workplace health promotion programs have been shown to be an efficient way of improving employee health. These can also benefit employers by improving retention, reducing worker turnover, and lowering healthcare costs. In Slovenia, a workplace health promotion program called “STAR-VITAL—Joint Measures for the Vitality of Older Workers” targeting small-and medium-sized enterprises has been ongoing since September 2017. We hypothesize that this workplace health promotion program will yield long-term health changes for the included employees and employers. Methods/Design: The manuscript presents a workplace health promotion program design that introduces some novel approaches and solutions to workplace health promotion program implementation. It also introduces a measurement of their effects that address the problem of low participation rates and the effectiveness of workplace health promotion programs, as follows: (1) the multifaceted and individualised approach to implementation, (2) customer relationship management (CRM)-based interaction management with program participants, and (3) impact evaluation based on employee health and labour market data observing both intermediate outcomes and the final outcomes based on national micro administrative data. Discussion: Although the novel approaches introduced with the STAR-VITAL program proved to be effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, they deserve the attention of scholars and practitioners. Further research is called for to further explore the potential of CRM in health promotion contexts, the effectiveness of multifaceted and individualised workplace health promotion program interventions, and micro administrative data-based impact evaluations. Conclusions: The STAR-VITAL program introduces several new approaches addressing the problem of low participation rates and the effectiveness of WHPPs. Further research is called for to discover and explore the potential of those novel approaches.