Tag: Organizational performance and productivity

The European Union’s goal of becoming the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010 will depend, in part, on achieving its ambitious goals for improving the overall quality of jobs.
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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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Despite much debate and commentary on the emerging knowledge economy in Canada and other
industrialized countries, there has been little in-depth analysis of how gender issues are playing
out in the process of economic and workplace change. Women’s experiences on the job are
usually examined using a limited range of measures, and scant attention has been paid to the
expectations that women and men bring to the workplace. The purpose of this report is to
provide new evidence on what women and men want in a job, and how they are experiencing the
transition to a knowledge-based economy.
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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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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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Across the industrialized world, governments have adopted a human resource-based model of economic development. Enabling citizens to acquire knowledge, skills and education is a necessary but no longer sufficient condition for economic success. Equally crucial is ensuring that past investments have the intended social and economic payoffs. The next generation of policy must strive to create the enabling conditions for the use and further development of human capital at the point where it can be most fully realized — within workplaces. This article focuses on the demand for human capital, assessing how well Canada is doing to maximize the returns on existing human capital investments among the highly educated.
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Today’s skill needs and tomorrow’s baby-boomer retirements are motivating employers to act strategically about recruitment and retention. Too often, however, the goal of a resilient and committed workforce is expressed in vague terms, like becoming an &’employer of choice’.
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