State of worksite health promotion in companies with and without Quality-Management systems: A comparative study

The goal of comprehensive worksite health promotion (WHP) is to protect and promote the health and performance of employees. WHP principles link health‐promotion activities to existing management systems, such as Quality Management (QM), to better integrate these activities into goals and processes of the company. Accordingly, it was hypothesized that the presence of a QM system is related to increased institutionalization and scope of WHP. Swiss companies in the service sector with a certified QM system (N = 289) were compared to a random sample of service‐sector companies without QM systems (N = 334). The results show that the presence of a certified QM system is related to the quality of WHP, as companies have both a stronger institutionalization and a broader scope of WHP compared to companies without a certified QM system. The present study produced empirical evidence that QM systems might be an enhancing factor for WHP. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.