Creating healthy, high-performance workplaces: Strategies from health and sports psychology.

Abstract

Consulting psychologists are ideally suited to assist in the creation of healthy and life-enhancing workplaces that can increase employee productivity while promoting behaviors that reduce the risk of lifestyle disease incidence or mitigate the effects of such illnesses when already present. When psychologists integrate strategies from health psychology, these interventions can help reduce medical costs and contribute to worker productivity and morale, because these strategies are proven to decrease the incidence of the five leading lifestyle diseases: coronary heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, diabetes, and stroke. Integrating techniques from sports psychology as well results in even more effective healthy workplaces than could be achieved from using either set of techniques in isolation. Recommendations are offered for nutritional counseling, smoking cessation, stress management, and exercise initiation. Five skills from sports psychology mental training are described because they could be incorporated into psychologists’ interventions for enhancing employee performance. A case study illustrates the key points.