Increasing workplace flexibility associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease

Increasing workplace flexibility may lower employees' risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Penn State University. In workplaces that implemented interventions designed to reduce conflict between employees’ work and their personal/family lives, researchers observed that employees at higher baseline cardiometabolic risk, particularly older employees, experienced a reduction in their risk for cardiovascular disease equivalent to between five and 10 years of age-related cardiometabolic changes.

The researchers randomly assigned the intervention to work units/sites within two companies: an IT company, comprised of 555 participating employees, and a long-term care company, with 973 participating employees.

These 1,528 employees across the experimental and control groups had their systolic blood pressure, body mass index, glycated hemoglobin, smoking status, HDL cholesterol, and total cholesterol recorded at the beginning of the study and again 12 months later. The researchers used this health information to calculate a cardiometabolic risk score (CRS) for each employee, with a higher score indicating a higher estimated risk of developing cardiovascular disease within the decade.

The study found that the workplace intervention did not have any significant overall effects on employees’ CRS. However, the researchers did observe reductions in CRS specifically among those with a higher baseline CRS: Those employees of the IT company and of the long-term care company saw a reduction in their CRS equivalent to 5.5 and 10.3 years of age-related changes, respectively.

Reference: “Employee Cardiometabolic Risk Following a Cluster-Randomized Workplace Intervention From the Work, Family and Health Network,” Lisa F. Berkman, Erin L. Kelly, Leslie B. Hammer, Frank Mierzwa, Todd Bodner, Tay McNamara, Hayami K. Koga, Soomi Lee, Miguel Marino, Laura C. Klein, Thomas W. McDade, Ginger Hanson, Phylis Moen, Orfeu M. Buxton, The American Journal of Public Health, November 8, 2023, DOI: http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307413