Managing the health of the employee.

In summary, we now visualize the ideal preventive-health program as one which identifies target subpopulations with precision; intervenes in those populations with selectivity based on anticipated yield; modifies and tailors each intervention to maximize its individual effectiveness; and delivers the whole program through health-care delivery machinery that can itself be managed for maximum efficiency. This cannot be done without sophisticated information processing capability which permits the individualization of intervention. Consequently, most prevention and health maintenance efforts in the work setting are, for a time at least, going to have to be satisfied with less than ideal characteristics and less than optimum cost-effective ratios. That does not mean that there is nothing that can be done, or that all current programs are obsolete, or that no results can be achieved. It does mean that professionals and managers who are planning and directing such programs will increase their success to the extent that their programs can be made consistent with the principles involved, to the extent that all programs can be tailored to fit individual employee circumstances, and to the extent that the whole health-care management effort can be integrated into one smoothly functioning, efficient system.

The use of meditation--relaxation techniques for the management of stress in a working population.

The efficacy of meditation-relaxation techniques has been widely researched in the laboratory, but their effectiveness for management of stress in organizational settings is still relatively unexplored. The present study compared relaxation and control conditions as part of a program of stress-reduction in industry. A total of 154 New York Telephone employees self-selected for stress learned one of three techniques--clinically standardized meditation (CSM), respiratory one method meditation (ROM) or progressive relaxation (PMR)--or served as waiting list controls. At 5.5 months, the treatment groups showed clinical improvement in self-reported symptoms of stress, but only the meditation groups (not the PMR group) showed significantly more symptom reduction than the controls. The meditation groups had a 78% compliance rate at 5.5 months with treatment effect seen whether subjects practiced their techniques frequently or occasionally. The safe and inexpensive semi-automated meditation training has considerable value for stress-management programs in organizational settings.