Measuring Health and Human Performance in the Workplace

In 2012, Harvard University partnered with Johnson & Johnson and developed the HaPI index. The initiative was led by Dr. Eileen McNeely, Co-Director of Harvard’s Sustainability and Health Initiative for a Net Positive Enterprise (SHINE) at the School of Public Health. 

This tool is being used as a way for companies to compare themselves to others and measure how they are doing on the well-being front. The tool is intended to provide the business world a universal standard that can be used across industrial sectors and global businesses, showing how each business affects employee engagement, productivity, well-being, and organization and work culture. 

It is used to measure the following:

Well Being

Provides evaluative and affective attributes of well-being. Subjective well-being is synonymous with overall performance and good health. 

Productivity

Calculates the number of employee healthy days and a subjective work performance report

Engagement

Measures feelings at work (dedication, vigor, and absorption) that are associated with health, job resources, and work performance. 

Culture

Measures the availability of job resources (for example, management and colleague support, autonomy, workplace challenges, etc.) that have been previously related to health and performance. 

Recent HaPI survey results have concluded the following: 

Sleep patterns

Employees sleep six-and-a-half hours per night on weekdays. They also claimed that 12 of the last 30 days resulted in “poor sleep.” Additionally, researchers found a connection between commute time, the number of hours worked and sleep patterns. Employees with longer commutes and more hours worked were likely to get less sleep. Experts say it is important to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night for optimum performance. Poor sleep can also contribute to increased stress levels. 

Stress levels

Employees feel anxious for an average of 6.5 days out of 30. This number was higher for women and younger staff. There are many contributors to staff anxiety, including, a lack of sleep, a lack of exercise, a heavy workload or feeling a “lack of control” about how, when or where they get their work done.