Ethical dilemmas in workplace health promotion

In less than a decade, workplace health promotion programs designed to promote employee health and help reduce the high cost of health insurance premiums paid by business and industry have proliferated. Notwithstanding the latent benefits and cost savings that corporate management expects to gain from the investment in such programs, it is argued that workplace health promotion is not without potential misuse and that its goals and methods ought not to be above ethical scrutiny. Drawing on earlier work, we discuss how workplace health promotion may pose ethical problems related to social justice, protection of privacy, and social control. The attendant moral dilemmas for the professional whose responsibility it is to develop and implement such programs are also presented.