Ethical Dilemma in Motivating Employees

Case Study Attitudes And Perceptions

Solution

The Case of Ethical Dilemma in Motivating Employees

Many employers today are very concerned about the increase in healthcare costs. They also want healthy employees in order to avoid absences, enhance productivity, and improve morale. Thus, they are looking for ways to reduce healthcare costs and to manage the health of their employees. In our company, we have Wellness Program which provides annual health-risk assessment to the employees through medical exam that determines our weight, height, blood pressure, and cholesterol and sugar levels. We are also asked questions about our lifestyle, especially in regards to smoking and alcohol consumption. A twice-a-week Zumba Class is being offered after office hours. Informative post in our bulletin is always available and updated on a monthly basis. We even invited resource persons to conduct seminars on a regular basis on common health issues like cholesterol, stress management, obesity, etc.

For this case, an employer adopts rigorous “wellness program” and attempt to “force” their employees to lose weight and stop smoking by using financial rewards or penalties to promote healthy behaviour and control costs. However, a question on ethical issue can be identified in this practice: Is it ethical to make decisions in employment and to not hire applicants or to sanction employees based on their health? At first glance, I can say that “forcing” employees to be healthy is “ethically wrong.” An employer can implement wellness program but not through “stick approach” as it may impart negative feelings to the employee. Some employees who are obese or smoke or engage in unhealthy behaviour may become invasive and may feel penalized, thus may fell stressed and pained. This approach may be perceived as coercive, manipulative, demeaning, or punitive by the employees.

Smoking does have negative health consequences and be expected to affect work performance at times. However, the same might be said to a certain number of other behaviours such as too much work, poor eating, heavy drinking, lack of exercise, too little rest, living in a stressful environment and a dangerous hobby. These behaviours might also end up contributing to the increase in health care cost of the company.

Also, a policy on not hiring a smoker is clearly unfair because once hiring decision is based on any factors not directly related to the ability of a person to do a particular job put employee at risk of being deprived of fair employment opportunities. It is not necessary to engage in an ethically questionable hiring practice in order to promote health and contain health cost.

The employer’s ultimate objective, therefore, should be to create a “wellness culture” in the workplace by means of its upright and ethical wellness program and other healthy lifestyle measures. There are a lot alternative ways the employers can look into to motivate employees to stay healthy.  They can provide health-related information to employees, challenge them to become informed, and then become active participants in promoting their own health. The employer can provide the means for the employees to reach their full health potential by means of its wellness program. The employer also can offer healthy-meal options in the company cafeteria and snack bar, filtered free drinking water, and walking options.

Employees, on the other hand, tends to consider participating in voluntary wellness programs and actively work toward achieving wellness goals if they get support from their co-workers and tangible benefits from the employer. Such a voluntary wellness approach at work will be more effective, as well as less risky ethically, rather than having major lifestyle changes, even if in their own good, “forced” on them.

Specifically, workplace health programs might need to use certain biometric measures such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol to assess problematic areas in an employee’s health. But penalty programs should not assign financial penalties using these measures as targets. Rather, as in the case of smoking, employer should not penalize employees for the presence of nicotine in the body, instead employees should be penalized for not entering a Smoking Cessation Program provided by the company to try to improve their health. For obesity, penalty programs might target participation in nutritional counselling offered in the company; for hypertension, the target might be attendance at regular monitoring sessions; and for high cholesterol, the penalty target might be adherence to prescribed medication. If employees take the intended actions to improve their health, they should not be penalized, even if they do not achieve the ultimate health goal.

An ethical wellness program is a socially responsible and mutually beneficial action. The company’s investments in its employees’ health and wellness will pay off for them in the long-run and certainly will benefit the employees, their co-workers, families and communities. 

 

Ethical Dilemma in Motivating Employees