48% of Chinese companies offer health risk appraisals

About 48 percent of 80 surveyed Chinese corporate employers have offered a health risk appraisal (HRA) to their employees, and another 22 percent plan to offer an HRA next year, according to findings released Wednesday during the second Global Healthy Workplace Awards and Summit in Shanghai.

The survey, conducted by New York-based Buck Consultants, received responses from 927 corporations from 32 countries and regions to examine what strategies employers use to improve the health and wellbeing of their workers.

Of all of the respondents, 53 percent offer an HRA. The figure is 84 percent among US companies.

Beside HRAs, employers around the globe have also implemented a variety of workplace health programs, including employment assistance programs, which were most popular among US and Canadian respondents, and on-site occupational health programs, which Asian respondents preferred. They also conducted biometric health screenings and issued regular communications to their employees, including online mailings.

For global respondents, the two leading reasons to address workplace health issues are to reduce employee absences due to illness and to improve worker productivity.

The priority for Chinese respondents, most of which are from the manufacturing and mining industries, is to improve workplace safety.

"The workplace health issue is more challenging in China, because on one hand, to ensure workplace safety remains important, while on the other hand, high pressure is challenging many employees, especially those in big cities like Shanghai," said Wolf Kirsten, founder of International Health Consulting (IHC) in Germany, which helped Buck with the survey.

Co-presented by IHC and two nongovernmental organizations (NGO), the Global Healthy Workplace Awards and Summit will welcome about 150 insiders from companies, governments and NGOs to share ideas about improving the health of the global workforce.

The three winners of the awards will be announced Thursday in the categories of multinational companies, large employers with more than 500 workers, and small employers.

Dave Guilmette, president of the Global Employer Segment in Cigna, which sponsored the event, told the Global Times that the event was moved from London to Shanghai this year because he believes that the city, as well as China, will be a significant market for global players in promoting the wellbeing of workers in the near future.