Search results

Workplaces are challenging environments which place workers at the risk of obesity. This is particularly true for Australian road transport industry workplaces. The Analysis Grid for Environments Linked to Obesity (ANGELO) framework is a public health tool which can be used to conceptualise obesogenic environments. It suggests that workplaces have a variety of roles (in the physical, economic, political and sociocultural domains) in responding to obesity in transport industry workplaces. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings which explore this idea.

The project used a mixed-methods approach located within a participatory action research framework, to engage workplace managers and truck drivers in the implementation and evaluation of workplace health promotion strategies. The project involved six transport industry workplaces in Queensland, Australia.

This study found that transport industry workplaces perceive themselves to have an important role in addressing the physical, economic, political and sociocultural aspects of obesity, as per the ANGELO framework. However, transport industry employees – specifically, truck drivers – do not perceive workplaces to have a major role in health; rather, they consider health to be an area of personal responsibility.

Balancing the competing perceptions of truck drivers and workplace managers about the workplace’s role in health promotion is an important consideration for future health promotion activities in this hard-to-reach, at-risk population.

The use of the ANGELO framework allows the conceptualisation of obesity in a novel workplace context.

Factors for successful workplace health promotion (WHP) are well described in the literature, but often sourced from evaluations of wellness programmes. Less well understood are the features of an organisation that contribute to employee health which are not part of a health promotion programme. The purpose of this paper is to inform policy on best practice principles and provide real life examples of health promotion in regional Victorian workplaces.

Individual case studies were conducted on three organisations, each with a health and wellbeing programme in place. In total, 42 employers and employees participated in a face to face interview. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the qualitative data were thematically coded.

Employers and senior management had a greater focus on occupational health and safety than employees, who felt that mental/emotional health and happiness were the areas most benefited by a health promoting workplace. An organisational culture which supported the psychosocial needs of the employees emerged as a significant factor in employee's overall wellbeing. Respectful personal relationships, flexible work, supportive management and good communication were some of the key factors identified as creating a health promoting working environment.

Currently in Australia, the main focus of WHP programmes is physical health. Government workplace health policy and funding must expand to include psychosocial factors. Employers will require assistance to understand the benefits to their business of creating environments which support employee's mental and emotional health.

This study took a qualitative approach to an area dominated by quantitative biomedical programme evaluations. It revealed new information about what employees really feel is impacting their health at work.

Workplaces are described as “excellent” locations for promoting health as many employees spend more time here than in other locations, yet, many organisations overlook this opportunity. This paper seeks to examine the inhibitors and enablers that small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) face when promoting health within their workplaces. Previous research within workplace health promotion has largely focused on large, often multi‐national organisations.

A descriptive qualitative approach was adopted which involved interviewing health‐promotion champions/co‐ordinators within five SMEs located in south Wales in the UK. A thematic content analysis was undertaken and key themes identified.

The results identify key enablers to participating in health‐promotion programmes as being an external facilitator and the appointment of an internal health champion/co‐ordinator. The main inhibitors were resources, time and the longevity of the external support funded by a government initiative.

The paper identifies the enablers and barriers to SMEs promoting workplace health. An adaptation of a framework is provided to assist SME owner/managers to promote workplace health.

Few studies have examined the workplace health promoting activities of SMEs and particularly the role of externally supported programmes. This paper fills some of the gaps.

Workplace health promotion enables the dissemination of health-related information to a large portion of society and provides a vehicle for translating results of efficacy studies to effective lifestyle interventions under less controlled real-world conditions. To achieve effectiveness there needs to be a systematic approach to the design, implementation, and evaluation of workplace health promotion interventions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a workplace programme in a mining and steel making town in regional South Australia.

The Precede-Proceed model (PPM) was used as a framework to design the development, implementation, and evaluation of the programme.

Quality of life issues and antecedents of modifiable behavioural and environmental factors to be targeted by interventions were identified. Relevant socio-behavioural theories were used to guide intervention development and evaluation. An intervention programme was planned to enable the delivery of educational and skills-development strategies by peers within structured organisational work units.

This research utilises the PPM to develop, implement, and evaluate intervention strategies targeting the development of diabetes and cardiometabolic risk in a remotely located workplace population. Novel to this approach is the utilisation of the entire PPM in the research; the multiple baseline, interrupted time series design of the study; and its application in a workplace environment noted for increased health risk factors, within a community at high risk of development of type 2 diabetes.

In workplace health promotion, enhancing resources are less explored than risk factors. The aim of this paper is to explore the usability of the sense of coherence (SOC) theory to identify considerable and positively perceived work‐related factors and processes.

The study had a salutogenic approach to workplace health promotion. A total of 13 focus group interviews were conducted with hospital employees in Sweden. A deductive analysis was made with the SOC theory as a framework.

Work‐related specific enhancing resources (SER) were identified and analysed into the three components of SOC: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. SER's implication in daily performance is explained by employee expressions. Through increased understanding and awareness, SER could contribute to savoring positive experiences, and enhance SOC among employees. Antonovsky's concept Generalized Resistance Resources is suggested to be enlarged based on the expressed significance of concrete daily positive work occurrences to increase one's SOC.

Not all hospital professions were represented in the study. Further studies are required to involve physicians, paramedics, managers, as well as other settings, to compare and complement with additional experiences of workplace resources.

The study presents an opportunity to explore, understand, and foster workplace resources through assistance from the SOC theory. The SER presented in this study may serve as initial examples in workplace discussions about work‐related resources contributing to a sense of coherence.

This study contributes to public health research and workplace health promotion with a salutogenic focus on how to explore enhancing work‐related resources with the assistance of the practical SOC theory.

There is a clear link between dietary behavior and a range of chronic diseases, and overweight and obesity constitute an indirect risk in relation to these diseases. The worksite is a central venue for influencing dietary behavior. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of workplace influences on workers' dietary patterns.

The paper reviews the evidence of the effectiveness of dietary health promotion, and provides a brief overview of appropriate theoretical frameworks to guide intervention design and evaluation. The findings are illustrated through research examples.

Through case studies and published research, it is found that workplace dietary interventions are generally effective, especially fruit and vegetable interventions. There is less consistent evidence on the long‐term effectiveness of workplace weight management interventions, underscoring the need for further research in this area. This paper also reports evidence that changes in the work environment, including through health and safety programs, may contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of workplace health promotion, including dietary interventions. Organizational factors such as work schedule may also influence dietary patterns. The social ecological model, the social contextual model and political process approach are presented as exemplar conceptual models that may be useful when designing or assessing the effects of workplace health promotion.

The paper shows that using the worksite as a setting for influencing health by influencing dietary patterns holds considerable promise and may be instrumental in reducing workers' risk of developing chronic diseases.

The purpose of this study is to explore managers' understanding of workplace health promotion (WHP) and experiences of WHP activity within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in a Health and Social Care Trust area of Northern Ireland. The paper aims to focus on engagement with activities within the context of prevention of ill‐health and health protection, lifestyle issues and working culture and the environment as defined in the Luxembourg Declaration on WHP.

A Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological methodology is adopted, using in‐depth telephone interviews with a purposive sample of 18 SME managers. Data are analysed using Benner's strategy for data analysis.

“Levels of awareness of WHP activity” are revealed as a central theme and interpreted as “high awareness activities”, including the need to: preserve and protect employee health and safety, prevent ill‐health and injury and promote employees' quality of daily living, and “low awareness activities”, including the provision of training and development, human resource management and environmental considerations.

An “Iceberg” model, grounded in the data, draws attention to the limited awareness of what constitutes WHP activities and the untapped meaningfulness of organisational and environmental activities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new non-technological innovation concerning management processes in organization, focussing on occupational health promotion as a part of social responsibility (SR). Employer’s occupational health promotion includes systemic and systematic activities for good employees’ social, physical and mental health; synergy is suggested.

A qualitative analysis using SR, dialectical systems theory and human resource management is applied.

A healthy company can be built by occupational health promotion, which must take place socially responsibly and requisitely holistically.

Qualitative analysis is applied in desk and field research on Slovenia.

The novel socially responsible, requisitely holistic approach to managing employee’s health, exposing personal and corporate SR prevents oversights and resulting failures.

Available literature offers no similar concept.

The links between work and mental health are gaining increasing recognition both within individual member states and at European Community level as a whole. Yet it is also well recognised that employment has significant benefits for mental health and well‐being. This paper reviews current evidence on the negative mental health impacts of employment, the key factors in work‐related stress and European policies for promoting mental health in the workplace. It ends with some examples of good practice in workplace mental health promotion drawn from a range of European countries.