Health and Wellness Programs for Commercial Drivers (2007)

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47 Continued personal health and wellness are critically im- portant for truck drivers and bus/motorcoach operators— for themselves and for their families. What has not been so apparent until recently is just how important employee health and wellness is to commercial truck carriers and bus and motorcoach companies that want to retain quality employees and to control escalating costs associated with driver safety and health issues. The work done in this synthesis leads the research team to believe that employing healthier drivers can possibly increase highway safety by decreasing accident risk. Employers who implement health and wellness programs for their drivers may find that such programs lead to improved employee morale, lower driver turnover, reduced medical and workers’ compensation costs, and improved profits. Such forward thinking human capital strategies can help a company to main- tain a position of excellence in the transportation industry. This synthesis provides important information to aid in the understanding of 1. Research findings on workplace health consequences; 2. Corporate health and wellness programs and what they mean to a company’s productivity, safety, and bottom line costs/profits; and 3. Numerous health and wellness resources that can be used by truck and bus/motorcoach industries to enact viable HPM programs. The literature review presented, accompanied by survey and case study work, provides important information about (a) key health and wellness issues facing commercial drivers, (b) effective mechanisms for addressing these issues at the company level, and (c) areas for future research. Although the survey sample returns in this synthesis were small, the survey of driver managers and commercial drivers themselves elicited findings worthy of attention. • To begin to address commercial driver health issues, corpo- rate health and wellness programs do not need to be all encompassing. Programs can be started simply by adminis- tering a health risk appraisal to drivers to determine the most pressing needs and then establishing a plan to address those issues. • This sample of managers and drivers points to somewhat of a disconnect in how the two groups rank the priority of driver health risks. Surveyed drivers viewed sleep dis- orders and drug/alcohol abuse as two of the greatest health risks, whereas the surveyed managers viewed obe- sity and an unhealthy diet as high risks for their drivers. • It appears that health and wellness program components offered by some companies and used by drivers do address many of the concerns identified by both groups. • For those companies conducting health and wellness programs, both managers and drivers believe program support is given from the highest levels of the organiza- tion and is evident in messages communicated to drivers. • Integrating a health and wellness program throughout an organization’s operations is critical for long-term success. • The value of involving drivers’ families in the health and wellness program is understood and being accomplished by making program components available to family members. • To support the adage that “what gets measured gets accomplished,” it appears companies are tracking various performance metrics to identify where their health and wellness program is having the most effect and where addi- tional resources are needed. There are several “models” of employee health and wellness programs which commercial carriers can emulate or adopt for their purposes. Each company may need to tailor health and wellness programs to their particular needs. The findings gleaned from this synthesis include the following: • Many trucking and bus/motorcoach companies seemingly demonstrate too little appreciation for the possible C H A P T E R 6 Conclusions and Discussion

benefits of employee health and wellness programs for their companies (e.g. improved driver morale, cost-benefits to affect productivity, and bottom line profits, etc.). • What is needed long-term is a cultural change, a paradigm shift in the transportation industry toward embracing inte- grated models of health, safety, and productivity manage- ment as being the joint and shared responsibility of individual drivers, their managers, and senior leadership of their organizations. • Numerous corporate experiences with formal employee health and wellness programs are available to be learned from and shared. Currently, there is a gap between what is known from health and wellness research and best practice in other industries and what is being applied in the trans- portation communities that employ commercial drivers. • In the short term, companies employing commercial driv- ers should take a closer look at the many corporate wellness programs that already demonstrate substantial cost savings in terms of employee health, workers’ compensation claims, insurance costs, worker absenteeism, worker pro- ductivity, etc. Then they can make the decision to imple- ment program components building toward a corporate health and wellness program. • FMCSA-ATRI’s conduct of the Gettin’ in Gear train-the- trainer program for the past 5 years has acted as a catalyst for some portion of the trucking industry to get started with formal health and wellness programs. However, it is clear that many companies still need to make the decision to enact the findings and principles contained in training like the Gettin’ in Gear program into a companywide health and wellness program tailored to their specific circumstances. The commercial bus and motorcoach industry sector could also likely benefit from such wellness training. • Transportation companies interested in developing their own employee health and wellness programs are still very much in need of guidance and resources on “how to do it.” Better tools and off-the-shelf practices for translating knowledge into action are needed. • More case study examples of successful health and wellness and safety programs are needed to describe what works to point the way for other companies to make the decision to act and to gain insights about how to do it. Of special inter- est is learning how such health and wellness programs relate to economic outcomes—a key concern of business. • Prominent in the practical experiences of carriers is the dif- ficulty of making employee health and wellness program elements available to the drivers themselves—that is, how does one effectively reach and obtain driver involvement, especially when drivers are so mobile because of their day- to-day working environment and their quick turnover rates in employment? • Commercial driver advocate groups (e.g., FMCSA, ATA, NPTC, ATRI, the ABA, UMA, and others) each have important roles to play in helping bring about the needed culture change toward employee (driver) health and well- ness programs. • Screening for deficits in specific visual, mental, and physi- cal abilities that significantly predict at-fault crashes can be practically carried out in an office environment. With the aging of the work force, such practices will have increasing value for industry and highway safety. 48