The Surprising Truth About Why Your Boss Really Wants You Healthy—And What It Means for You.
Dan Schawbel: Why did you decide to investigate the impact of management on employee health and company performance? Did anything surprise you while research for the book?
Jeffrey Pfeffer: As a member of Stanford’s committee on faculty and staff human resources, and after sitting on Hewitt’s Human Capital Leadership Council with CHRO’s of some of the largest companies, I was struck by the almost obsessive focus on health care costs on the part of these largely self-insured organizations. But in this focus on health care costs, the emphasis was mostly on prices for various services and drugs and plan design to induce more cost-conscious individual decision making. To the extent there was a focus on prevention rather than remediation of health care costs, it was on individual behaviors such as exercise, diet, and smoking. It struck me that employers were possibly missing the profound effects of work environments on both individual health-relevant behaviors and morbidity and mortality outcomes and costs.
