Are physical activity and nutrition indicators of the checklist of health promotion environments at worksites (CHEW) associated with employee obesity among hotel workers?

OBJECTIVE: Worksites provide opportunities to reach more than 60% of adults in the United States, including populations diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, age, occupation, income, and health status. Employers that provide worksite weight management interventions have the potential to reduce sick leave, health care costs, and workers compensation costs, and increase employee morale and worker efficiency. Hotels specifically, represent a broad cross-section of job categories, and most hotels are staffed and operated similarly around the world. However, from our literature review, there have been no investigations of the association between the hotel environment and employees' obesity.
METHODS: For this study, we tested the relationship between environmental factors in hotels and employees' body mass index (BMI).
RESULTS: Overall no substantial correlations were found on any environmental variable. However, hotel size affected some relationships. Higher BMI was related to greater number of stairs, stair facilitation, and the healthy eating facilitation variables (excluding nutrition signs or posters) in medium sized hotels. Lower BMI was found with greater stair facilitation in small hotels; and with greater number of physical activity (PA) signs, lunch room nutrition signs, and hotel nutrition signs in large hotels. Unionized status affected only two environmental variables. For unionized hotels, BMI was negatively correlated with PA signs and positively correlated with the healthy eating facilitation.
CONCLUSIONS: No logical pattern of association was found between workplace environmental factors and hotel employee BMI levels. Further research should investigate the interaction of the size and structure of the workplace with the impact of environmental efforts to reduce overweight and obesity.