Tag: Healthy Organizations

Keynote presentation at the Roundtable Project on Safe and Timely Return to Function/Return to Work. September 8, 2003. Toronto.
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This article lays out the ingredients of a healthy organization, how this is a step beyond ‘workplace healthy promotion’, and the change strategies required to get there.
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This paper examines two health issues of crucial importance to practitioners and policy makers: the work environment and organizational factors that positively influence workers’ health and well-being, and the relationship between healthy workplaces and productivity. Research in diverse disciplines agrees on the importance of supporting employees to be effective in their jobs in ways that promote, not compromise, their health. The ingredients include leadership that values employees as key assets, supportive supervision at all levels, employee participation, job control, communication, opportunities to learn, and a culture that gives priority to work-life balance and individual wellness. There is also evidence of causal links between working conditions, interventions designed to create healthier workplaces, employee health, and firm-level productivity. Studies suggest that successful healthy workplace initiatives are comprehensive in scope, integrated with other human resource programs, and have well-designed implementation strategies based on strong leadership, good communication and extensive participation. While significant knowledge gaps remain, these should not deter employers, employees and policy makers from taking action now to create healthy organizations.
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The old industrial era was stressful for workers. Factories churning out endless consumer products were built around assembly line jobs, which were physically taxing and mind-numbingly boring. In today’s global knowledge economy, robots or workers in developing countries do most of the factory work. The "blue-collar blues," as factory worker dissatisfaction was called in the sixties and seventies, no longer is a major threat to productivity. Originally published in the Globe and Mail, October 2002.
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Presenteeism hurts output, quality of work-life and employee health. Absenteeism has caught the attention of many employers. It’s on the rise, costly, and one of the most widely measured indicators of a healthy organization.
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Keynote presentation by Graham Lowe at the Health, Work & Wellness 2002 Conference. Lake Louise, Alberta. October 7, 2002
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Anecdotal evidence suggests that some injured workers do not file for workers’ compensation claims. This article provides evidence of this under-reporting, based on a national survey of Canadian workers. Forty percent of workers who had experienced an injury elibible for workers’ compensation had not filed a claim. Policy makers therefore need to do more to ensure that all relevant parties are aware of their obligations to report work injuries.

Expect to hear a lot more about workplace health in the near future. Skyrocketing public and private health-care costs will almost certainly increase calls for workplaces to be used as venues for health promotion.
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Looking into a future marked by intense competition for talent, growing numbers of employers are striving to create “workplaces of choice.” Yet, despite the consensus that health human resources are a vital piece of the healthcare reform puzzle, few health service organizations have developed comprehensive strategies to address work environment issues. The cumulative impact of years of cost-cutting, downsizing and restructuring have left Canada’s healthcare workforce demoralized, overworked and coping with working conditions that diminish both the quality of working life and organizational performance. This article offers an analysis of these work environment challenges, an alternative vision of a high-quality health care workplace, and an action for getting there.
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Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) convened in 2002 a national workshop in Ottawa to develop quality of worklife indicators for nurses in Canada. Using a collaborative, consensus-building process the workshop actively engaged participants in identifying a set of practical quality of worklife indicators (QWI) that will make a measurable difference for professional nurses. The workshop’s major recommendation is that these indicators be incorporated into the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA) Achieving Improved Measurement (AIM) standards used for accrediting healthcare organizations.
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