Lifestyle Of Employees Research Articles

The Legal Limits of Employees’ Off-Duty Privacy Rights

There is increasing concern among managers about the impact that their employees’ offthe-job behavior has on the company. To some extent, this interest is sparked by the recognition that employee lifestyles affect employer health care costs. However, offduty conduct is also suspected to affect the efficiency and productivity of workers, as well as increase an employer’s exposure to liability for defective products made by individuals whose on-the-job performance is affected by what they did off the job. The policy challenge for employers is to determine the legal guidelines that they can use for monitoring and regulating the private conduct of employees without violating employees’ legally protected right to privacy. Can employers regulate employee smoking or illegal substance use? Can employers make employee decisions based on the person’s weight? Can employers attempt to regulate employees’ social relationships and sexual conduct because of their suspicion that there is a danger such conduct might adversely affect the company’s economic interests? The sections that follow examine such questions, both to help determine the legal limits of an employer’s right to regulate the private conduct of employees and to help specify the types of conduct that an employer may control. LEGAL PROTECTION FOR EMPLOYEE PRIVACY

Screening for unhealthy lifestyle factors in the workplace.

To examine (1) the prevalence of four lifestyle behaviours among Australia Post employees and (2) employees' perceptions of the role of the workplace in promotion of lifestyle change. A cross-sectional survey using a self-administered questionnaire involved 688 employees working in Australia Post throughout metropolitan Sydney. Prevalence related to age and sex of alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, inadequate exercise, perception of excessive weight. 36% of men and 11% of women reported drinking alcohol at levels considered hazardous or harmful; 33% of men and 25% of women reported smoking; 51% of men and 62% of women thought they were overweight; 30% of men and 39% of women did not exercise regularly. Younger respondents were more likely to report drinking hazardously or harmfully, were smokers and had multiple risk factors. A majority of respondents thought that their employer should be interested in employee's lifestyle issues, particularly excessive drinking (63%). However, few considered seeking advice from the workplace regarding smoking (16%), weight (25%) and excessive alcohol consumption (12%). These results show that many of Australia Post employees have unhealthy lifestyle behaviours. While employees perceive that the workplace has an important role in promoting healthy lifestyles among staff, few are presently willing to seek advice from the workplace regarding these issues. Promotion of healthy lifestyles in Australian workplaces is a potentially important public health advance that could reduce the incidence of diseases associated with high-risk lifestyle behaviours.

Flexible employment practices and working time patterns: the potential for and limits of ecological impact

The discussion about the relationship between employment policy and environment policy has been predominantly about the extent to which environmental issues can be brought into industrial relations policy. Environmental problems are perceived as additional factors of influence, which have an impact on job security and working conditions, and which have so far not been adequately taken into account in standards and rules. From the current viewpoint of union representatives, conservation of the environment is being brought into discussion in the form of an "employment policy extended to include the environment". Progress made in this field in recent years is increasingly undermined by radical changes in the labour market. The current phase is being determined by high and rising rates of unemployment, growing numbers of casual and temporary jobs and stagnating pay levels. The strategies of management focus on increasing the flexibility of the workforce, in the form of flexible employment conditions, and more flexible use of laboúr. These changes in the crucial framework conditions for paid employment are bound to have a significant influence on the attitudes and behaviour of employees with regard to conservation of the environment. In the following article, we shall be looking at two aspects: Garcia and La Roca (1) deal with the increase in casual and temporary jobs, and Hildebrandt and Kühleis (2) deal with new patterns of working hours. This different emphasis relates to different aspects of "increased flexibility" . On the one hand, flexibility can be seen as a sign of increasing job insecurity, with the consequence that the scope for sustainable attitudes and behaviour is less than before. If, on the other hand, increased flexibility is seen as an opportunity for negotiating more leisure time and power for workers to allocate their time as they want - as in the German case - the room for manoeuvre is greater and it opens up possibilities for a sustainable way of life. The remarks in the first section deal with a representative survey of current attitudes in Spain, and lead to predominantly ' negative results. The second section deals with new models of working hours, and in this context, it examines the conditions and opportunities for positive changes in the lifestyle of employees. The approaches in the first and second section are not directly comparable, but they do provide insight into possible consequences of new management strategies for ecological commitment among employees in their working and leisure time.

Public Personnel Management in County Government

In recent decades there have been many social, economic and political changes in society which have led to an emphasis on progressive public personnel policies and management. Some of the most salient changes for public personnel policy have been the increasing number of women in the workplace, a societal emphasis on equality and diversity, the unionization of government employees, and an increasing emphasis on employee lifestyle issues. This article investigates how well county governments have responded to these new workplace dynamics and the factors associated with adaptive change. The focus of the analyses presented is the adoption of progressive personnel practices and policies such as sexual harassment prevention training and complaint processing, affirmative action recruitment, collective bargaining rights, and employee assistance policies. Based on a survey of 790 counties in 1993, the results indicate that the adoption of formal sexual harassment, affirmative action, collective bargaining, and employee assistance programs is demonstrably related to level of urbanization, the presence of a professional personnel office, size of the workforce, local-level representation of women and/ or minorities in public office, and political culture.

Book Review: Labor and Employment Law: Employee Lifestyle and Off-Duty Conduct Regulation

Book Review: Labor and Employment Law: Employee Lifestyle and Off-Duty Conduct Regulation

Employee Lifestyle and Off-Duty Conduct Regulation.

Employee Lifestyle and Off-Duty Conduct Regulation.

A critical analysis of work-site fitness programs and their postulated economic benefits

Many early work-site exercise programs had a unique fitness focus. More recently, modular programs have addressed many facets of lifestyle. Their stated objective has often been to boost corporate morale or employee health rather than to have direct economic benefits, and evaluation has frequently been in terms of process rather than a cost-benefit or a cost-effectiveness analysis. Nevertheless, a growing number of authors have claimed fiscal dividends from such programs. A full economic evaluation must consider such issues as the transfer of benefits between various sectors of the economy, opportunity costs to participants, marginal costs and benefits, inflation, discounting, and the choice between cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses. Suggested benefits include an improvement of corporate image, a decrease of employee turnover, gains of productivity, reduced absenteeism and medical costs, an improved employee lifestyle, and a decrease of industrial injuries. In practice, the corporate impact of a program is greatly attenuated, depending on prevalence of need, participation rate, program response of recruits, and continued employment of such individuals within a company. Costs to the corporation include promotion, facilities, equipment, and professional leadership. However, such items are often small relative to the opportunity costs incurred by the participant. For this reason, activities that can be built into the normal day of the employee (for example, walking or cycling to and from work) may prove more acceptable and more cost-effective than formal work-site classes.