Contribution of Metropolitan Employers to the Maintenance of Employees’ Health: Moscow Experience

Abstract

Healthy lifestyle prevents noncommunicable diseases, which is a priority of state policy in this area. To follow this policy, employers should provide their employees with the possibility to maintain healthy lifestyle at work because healthy workers are an important business resource, not to mention public benefits. The research objective was to study the healthy lifestyle practices in Moscow organizations of various forms of ownership. The authors revealed some statistically significant dependencies between the employer’s attitude to the employees’ health, the employees’ lifestyle, and how the employees assessed their health. According to the survey, 61 % of able-bodied Muscovites believe that their employers care about their health. The main health preservation practices included comfortable working conditions (75 %), alcohol ban (71 %), friendly atmosphere (64 %), and good work-and-rest patterns (62 %). In addition, voluntary medical insurance was mentioned as a popular measure (44 %). Other basic principles of healthy lifestyle at work included physical activity, healthy diet, maintaining mental health, quitting smoking and alcohol consumption, etc. Large businesses proved to offer their employees the most diverse health programs. The authors also developed some principles of corporate health programs.