ORIGINAL ARTICLE  EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CLINICAL MEDICINE Open access

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2025 May;65(5):673-80

DOI: 10.23736/S0022-4707.25.16125-2

Copyright © 2025 THE AUTHORS

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license which allows users to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon the manuscript, as long as this is not done for commercial purposes, the user gives appropriate credits to the original author(s) and the source (with a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI), provides a link to the license and indicates if changes were made.

language: English

Enhancing workplace wellness: the impact of multidisciplinary interventions on employee health and productivity

Chiara NOVIELLO ¹, Giacomo RIFORMATO ¹, Michele M. PALATTELLA ², Sabrina LATTANZIO ¹, Eustachio CUSCIANNA ¹, Silvio TAFURI ¹ ✉

¹ Interdisciplinary Department of Medicine, Aldo Moro University of Bari, Bari, Italy; ² Welfare Aurora Group, Gioia del Colle, Bari, Italy

BACKGROUND: Healthy lifestyles play an important role in speaking about the onset of chronic diseases; sedentary work and bad habits can worsen workers’ health, eventually affecting productivity. Some companies have increasingly invested in workplace wellness programs to improve workers’ health and decrease health care costs. This study describes a pilot experience on the advantages of the introduction wellness interventions in workplace .
METHODS: From April 2022 to April 2023, 70 employees in multiple working roles have been selected (on volunteer base) for a training protocol. A questionnaire was used, analyzing the 5 aspects before and after training program: kinesiology, physiotherapy, psychology, nutrition, science of happiness.
RESULTS: Participants who did not carry out intense physical activity on a weekly basis drastically decreased from 56% to 34.5%. No cases with persistent pain, compared to 10.4% previously recorded. Participants eating, more than once a day, packaged industrial foods were eliminated. Participants in “good mood” increased from 11.9% to 31% and who feels positive emotions increased from 35.8% to 55.2%.
CONCLUSIONS: Results show the benefit of the multidisciplinary approach and the strong impact between the training days and clear improvements in both aspects of working life and personal aspects. A strategy aiming and increasing the stakeholder’s awareness in changing behavior and promoting the culture of prevention is recommended. It is possible to hope to export and experiment with this method in more extensive corporate contexts, in order to make it applicable on a larger scale.

KEY WORDS: Health; Workplace; Physical fitness