A toolkit for personal health resources at the workplace

Abstract

Strengthening personal health resources is an important aspect of "Health promotion at the workplace’’. Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) is the combined effort of employers, employees and society to improve the health and well-being of people at work. This can be achieved through a combination of improving the work organization and the working environment, promoting active participation, and encouraging personal development. The question is how employers can best provide access to high quality tools and blended learning programmes which enhance workers’ health behaviors. While acknowledging the individual’s responsibility for his or her own health, this set of activities focuses on the role of the environment and the managers or employers. The attention here is on the organization and design of work in both its physical and psychosocial dimensions. Our task is to identify, prioritize and validate those instruments, which are most appropriate for specific cultures, environments and technologies as guided by the principles of the WHO healthy workplace model. The connection between the physical and psychosocial environments is influenced by high level management choices and decisions about how work will be organised. The psychosocial environment is essential for a health promotion climate. Consequently, the workplace is seen primarily as a venue through which various health promotion programmes can be delivered. Supportive management climate refers to organizing work in ways that promote rather than defeat health of employees. This means maximizing the degree to which employees participate in the governance of their own work (including the maintenance of a physically safe environment), and providing adequate recognition and acknowledgment for good work. In this way, management will communicate their serious intention to create those working conditions that lies in the focus of the connection between the organization of work and health. WHP consists of policies based on programmes, projects or instruments such as questionnaires, guidelines and information materials, programmes on the prevention of addictive drugs (such as alcohol abuse, smoking), the promotion of healthy eating habits, opportunities for physical activity, addressing mental health and stress, promoting family friendly working conditions and providing diversity training programmes.