Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises’ Preferences for Occupational Health Services and Willingness to Pay

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular benefit from occupational health services because these may help to reduce the potential costs of accidents or illnesses at work, support staff retention and recruitment, and decrease wage costs. Nevertheless, SMEs, especially microenterprises (<10 persons employed), rarely offer these services to their employees. The innovation incubator’s project “Healthy at Work” offers research-based advice to private service units to support SMEs to provide occupational health services in the region of Luneburg. This chapter describes how we use an Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis combined with a short willingness to pay (WTP) questionnaire to elicit SMEs’ preferences regarding occupational health services. We found that the optimal approach is to offer a comprehensive service package tailored to the needs of the individual company on a pay-per-use basis. The private supplier benefits from cooperation with a social insurance provider: either a health insurance fund or occupational accident insurer. Further, we found that employers are willing to pay for services. Within the group that is willing to pay, WTP increases with company size. It is therefore particularly important to offer appealing and affordable occupational health services to microenterprises, preferably in cooperation with social insurance providers.