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Over the last 25 years, municipal governments responded to an environment of increasing health care costs by implementing workplace wellness programs. Research reveals that workplace wellness programs can produce performance benefits ranging from reduced health care costs to productivity improvements. However, there is no systematic study of local government wellness programs that identifies the practices that produce cost reductions and productivity improvements. This article presents the results of a national survey of wellness programs in U.S. municipalities. We develop an index of program success using performance data from our sample. Statistical analysis reveals that targeted investments and performance monitoring, at both the individual and program level, serve to reduce costs and improve employee productivity. This research, thus, provides evidence for best practices in local government wellness programs. Given the array of potential benefits of wellness programs and the locus of employers in the provision of health care benefits, it is necessary to further investigate wellness programs in U.S. local governments.

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Forty years ago, Herbert Simon reminded public managers of the limits of rationality, or the bounded rationality, of the individual decision maker. New analytical techniques from the sciences of complexity now provide a means to measure the complexity in the environment of public managers using actual organizational data. Time series analysis is used to examine data from the external environment of two urban police divisions. Results of the analysis reveal that the complexities of the environment of public organizations may serve as an inhibition to rational decision making that extends beyond the limits of the individual proposed by Simon.