Workplace heart health: how employers can help without playing doctor

In France, employers are legally required to assess occupational risks and to put a prevention approach in place, as INRS, France’s national institute for occupational health and safety, explains. This responsibility must not be confused with an optional wellness program. Assessing work-related risks remains the priority.

Start with the written risk assessment (in France, the mandatory “document unique”) and with dialogue with prevention stakeholders. Irregular hours, prolonged sitting, heat, physical strain, organizational stress or difficult access to breaks can all affect health. Action must target the real work: schedules, workload, workstations, autonomy, recovery and environment.

Encouraging employees to walk more makes little sense if breaks are impossible or the surroundings are unsafe.

Collective prevention can include:

• Opportunities to move built into the working day
• Accessible stairs and suitable bike storage
• A varied food offer, where the company controls it
• Smoke-free spaces and access to recognized quit-smoking support
• Clear information on warning signs and emergency numbers
• First aid training, depending on the context
• Actions compatible with disability, working hours and remote work

Avoid challenges based solely on step counts or weight loss. They can exclude some people and encourage public exposure of sensitive data. Measure the accessibility and use of collective resources instead.

An employee may want to measure certain indicators or discuss their risk factors. This must be free, informed and organized with qualified healthcare professionals. Declining must have no professional consequences.

France’s data protection authority, the CNIL, states that an employer must not know its employees’ health data. Individual results must therefore stay between the person and authorized parties. The company can receive aggregated information if it is sufficiently protected and necessary to manage the program, with no possibility of re-identifying an individual or a small team.

With MyTwin for employers, companies choose which prevention modules to make available, including cardiovascular health. Employees who opt in follow a personal, supported journey: their results stay between them and authorized professionals, and an unusual result leads them to a healthcare professional. The employer measures the program through aggregated indicators and never accesses individual medical information. Whatever offer you are assessing, ask exactly what data the employee, the healthcare professional, the provider and the employer can each see.

Screening is only responsible if it plans what happens next. Before the campaign, define:

• Who explains the result
• How an unusual measurement is checked
• Which professional the person is referred to
• What timeframe is recommended
• What instructions apply in case of an urgent warning sign
• How continuity is ensured without passing the file to the employer

Technologies based on a camera, a smartwatch or a questionnaire must make their status, accuracy, limits and conditions of use explicit. Avoid any promise that a quick test could rule out a disease.

An employer dashboard can track:

• Information and voluntary participation rates
• Accessibility by site, working hours and job category
• Time to access professionals or services
• Satisfaction and understanding
• The number of referrals, aggregated, where the framework allows
• Changes in exposures or collective adjustments
• Incidents, complaints and requests to exercise data rights

Do not make success conditional on a rapid drop in costs or absenteeism. These indicators depend on many factors and can move in the wrong direction in the short term, when better access to care reveals needs that had previously gone unaddressed.

Our article on measuring a workplace health program complements this framework. The one on personalized prevention and privacy details the necessary separation between the individual journey and collective management.

Weeks 1–3: assessment

Bring together HR, occupational health, prevention, employee representatives, the data protection officer (DPO) and IT security. Analyze occupational risks, existing programs and barriers to access. Define the target population without selecting people based on medical assumptions.

Weeks 4–6: design

Choose a limited objective. Formalize voluntary participation, data flows, governance, referral criteria and indicators. Have the messages reviewed: they must inform without alarming or blaming.

Weeks 7–9: pilot

Test with a diverse scope, with an alternative for employees who are less well equipped or less comfortable with digital tools. Collect the difficulties encountered and check that line managers cannot access any individual data.

Weeks 10–12: decision

Compare results with objectives, correct inequalities of access and decide whether to continue, adjust or stop. Share a transparent summary of lessons learned and safeguards with employees.