Health Works Guide

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Table of Contents

• Promoting a healthy workplace.
• Why do it?
• Maximize your impact
• A simple, five-step process:
  • Step 1. Build commitment
  • Step 2. Find out what employees need and want
  • Step 3. Put together a plan
  • Step 4. Put activities in place
  • Step 5. Follow up and revise your activities
• Contact information

Promoting a healthy workplace.

Whether you're just getting started or you’re thinking about how you can improve your business, read on and find out how workplace health promotion can help you to:

• meet your business goals
• contribute to employee health and well-being
• improve the overall quality of the work environment

Why do it?

Promoting health in your workplace doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive or time consuming. It’s a matter of making a commitment to workplace health, finding out what kinds of initiatives your employees want, developing a plan, and putting some activities in place.

It can be as easy as:

• consulting with employees about how to make the work space safer and more efficient
• talking with staff about options for redistributing the workload among employees in order to reduce/eliminate difficult deadlines
• discussing with employees the possibility of inviting someone from the community to provide information on a topic of interest (e.g., stress management, nutrition, balancing work and family life)
• asking employees for their input on implementing a “no smoking” policy
• personnel searches, interviewing, recruiting and training costs
• the loss of skills, knowledge and “corporate” memory

Research shows that attention to health and safety can:

• improve employee morale
• enhance productivity

Do it for your business!

As an employer or manager, you know the hassles of dealing with poor employee
morale, re-assigning workloads because of chronic absenteeism, filling out benefit claim forms and trying to get “the right person for the job” when a valued employee leaves. Not only are they costly, time consuming and aggravating, these tasks prevent you from putting your energies into activities designed to build your business — for example, dealing with clients and planning for the company’s future.

Do it for your business!

With most people spending almost two thirds of their waking hours on the job, the workplace has a significant impact on health. Research supports the fact that the workplace affects employee health and well-being. For example:

• job stress can make people sick — and factors such
  as poor communication, job insecurity, and unsafe
  working conditions contribute to job stress
• employees who are subject to high demands over an extended
  period of time and have little control over their work can
  experience depression, heart disease, anxiety and other diseases
• injuries on the job can also have a negative impact on
  co-workers and families

In a national survey on workplace health, employees said that they:

• valued employers efforts to promote health and safety
• supported activities designed to develop healthier behaviours in the workplace

Workplace health promotion isn’t just about preventing illness, injury and accidents.

Maximize your impact

To maximize your impact on employee health and the health of your business, your “total” health promotion program should address each of the following:

• Environment or surroundings:
  Factors in the home or work environment that affect
  employee health, such as air, noise and lighting conditions,
  the quality of machinery and equipment, the type of work, responsibilities at work, relations with supervisors and co-workers, and relations with family at home.
• Personal resources:
  The sense of influence employees feel they have over their health and work, how much social support they feel they receive from others and the degree to which they actively participate in improving their own health.
• Health practices:
  Practices that affect health, including exercise, smoking, drinking, sleeping and eating habits, as well as the use of medication and other drugs.

A simple, five-step process

• Step 1. Build commitment
• Step 2. Find out what employees need and want
• Step 3. Put together a plan
• Step 4. Put activities in place
• Step 5. Follow up and revise your activities

Step 1. Build commitment

Build employee commitment for workplace health promotion initiatives by keeping these important points in mind:

• As the owner/manager, you are essential to the process. You need to be involved and enthusiastic.
• If you can’t stay actively involved, select a champion.
• Follow up on progress, expect results and reward them appropriately.
• Promote the benefits of a healthy workplace by staging an event, posting information around the workplace or talking informally about it with employees.

Step 2. Find out what employees need and want

Assessing and understanding employees’ needs and preferences is an essential part of the process. If a workplace health promotion program is going to be successful, it has to reflect what employees themselves consider to be important. For example, there is no point in arranging for a speaker on stress management if employees aren’t interested and won’t attend.

Following is a brief description of four methods of determining employee needs and preferences. Choose the one that is right for your workplace.

Have an informal discussion

Sit down with your employees and discuss their concerns about their own health and the health of the organization. You don’t have to schedule a special meeting — just “piggyback” it on to another meeting or ask people informally. Ask for input about how to proceed and take the opportunity to gauge — and promote — enthusiasm for the initiative.

Put up a suggestion box

One of the easiest, most efficient and least intrusive ways to get employee input is to set up a suggestion box. (If you have the computer capability, you might consider an “electronic suggestion box” to permit employees an even greater degree of confidentiality.) Make sure to:

• promote it to employees both before and during the period it is set up
• ask for suggestions about: environment and surroundings, personal resources, and health practices
• emphasize that all suggestions will be considered seriously and confidentially
• put it up when most of your staff are likely to be around — i.e., not during
  a holiday period
• make the suggestion box attractive, visible and easily accessible
• follow up on all the suggestions in some way — even if it’s just acknowledging them

Host an employee meeting

Organize a meeting of some or all of your employees to identify needs and how to address them. If only some of your employees are attending, make sure you have a good mix of all the different groups in the workplace. Keep in mind that employees may not be willing to discuss some health issues (e.g., alcohol and substance abuse issues) and personal and family issues. You may also want to consider getting an outsider or trusted employee to lead the discussion — if you think your presence will inhibit people from speaking frankly.

A sample meeting agenda:

• review the purpose of the meeting
• brainstorm a collective vision of a healthy workplace — i.e., “in an ideal world, our workplace would look like ....”
• identify key areas for potential improvement (i.e., environment and surroundings, personal resources and health practices)
• brainstorm activities that address these concerns and identify potential barriers
• organize the activity suggestions in order of importance
• review your findings and agree on next steps

Conduct a mini-survey

A brief questionnaire can tell you a lot about what health and safety issues are important to employees. If you choose this option, you’ll need to promote it well in order to maximize employee participation. Bear in mind that you’ll also need to tabulate and evaluate the responses, so this process is more labour intensive than the others. On the plus side, employees can reply anonymously and will likely feel more comfortable about disclosing their workplace concerns than they might
otherwise. Think about having the results tabulated by a small group of employees, or by someone from outside your organization. See pages 8-10 for suggested survey questions.

Choosing the method that’s right for you

Since no two businesses are alike, it’s impossible to provide a “one-method-fits-all” process for assessing employee needs. Keep in mind the following factors when
you’re designing a process that’s right for your workplace.

• Literacy levels: Do all your employees read the language used in your
  workplace? At what level? Is print the best way to communicate or is an
  employee meeting a better option?
• Cultural mix: Do cultural practices make open communication between the sexes or between different groups of employees difficult, if not impossible? If so, it might make more sense to hold two meetings — one for men and one for women, or one for different ethnic groups.
• Shiftwork: Do rotating shifts in the workplace make it difficult to plan meetings? Perhaps you can schedule one shift to stay half an hour later, and have the next shift come in half an hour earlier.
• Confidentiality: Is there open communication in your organization or would employees feel more comfortable giving their opinions completely anonymously? Employees may feel constrained if their employer or supervisor is present at the meeting.
• Time available: Time is money — and both are tight — so you may not be able to afford the time for a full employee meeting. Try sharing the responsibility by asking employees to come in a little early or stay late and have the organization contribute 15 minutes of “work time,” as well.
• Urgency: Has your staff been expressing health and safety concerns? Is this the talk around the coffee machine or water cooler? If so, you’ll want to get a process in place right away.

Choosing the method that’s right for you

Sample Questions for an Employee Meeting or Mini-Survey (Step 2)

Environment or surroundings (physical and social)

Health and safety hazards and unpleasant working conditions are often a source
of concern to employees.

• What health and safety changes could be made to this workplace?
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  
  Certain work situations can cause employees excess worry, nerves or stress and can negatively affect their health.
  
• How could work be better organized to help reduce stress?
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  
• What could your workplace do to help reduce stress at home or outside of work?
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  
  Health practices
  People’s health practices — e.g., their eating, smoking, physical activity habits — can affect their health.
  
• What, if anything, would you like to do to improve your health? What, if anything, is stopping you from making these changes?
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  
• What kinds of things do you think your employer could do to help you improve or maintain your health?
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________
  
  Personal resources
  Having a sense of influence over your work can affect your overall health and well-being.
  
• Do you feel that you have an influence over what happens to you at work?
  
  Yes
  No
  
  Having a sense of influence over your work can affect your overall health and well-being.
  
• Do you feel in control of your own health?
  
  Yes
  No

Step 3. Put together a plan

As a blueprint for action, your health promotion plan helps to chart your direction for the future. Set out some goals for the short term (e.g., six months to one year) and some longer term objectives (e.g., one to two years), then revisit the plan periodically to check on where you are and what you’ve achieved and to plan some minor or even major modifications. (Refer to the evaluation guide on page 21.)

Your plan should:

• meet the needs of all employees – regardless of their current level of health, literacy level, cultural group, social and skill background
• strike a balance between what the employee and employer can do
• address employee concerns in all areas – environment or surroundings (physical and social), personal resources and health practices
• include the following key elements:
  • an overview of your findings about employee needs and preferences (e.g., half of employees said they were concerned about the lack of employee input into job tasks)
  • some broad-level recommendations (e.g., hold a weekly meeting to discuss the work flow and how work will be divided up, including plans for a try-out period)
  • a general idea of the resources you’ll be using (e.g., local library, public health department, outside contractors)
  • a schedule, focusing on short and long-term objectives
  • an evaluation strategy

Use the template on pages 12-14 to develop your own plan.

Step 4. Put activities in place

Follow your workplace health promotion plan and get things moving. Make sure you promote your initiatives by putting up some posters around the office, advertising them through your office e-mail, or including a note in employees’ pay envelopes or just "tacking them up" around the workplace.

You’ll get the best results if you use a combination of the three following types of activities:

• Awareness activities give employees the information they need to make informed choices. These activities alone won’t change people’s behaviour, so combine them with skill-building activities and supportive work environments.
• Skill-building activities encourage people to get actively involved in changing their behaviour. These activities may require some commitment of time, space, equipment or money.
• Supportive work environments send out a strong message about your commitment to health and safety in the workplace (e.g., supportive policies for managing home/work responsibility).

Your health promotion activity plan should address the following:

• What do we want to achieve? (Objectives)
• What activities can we put in place to help us get there? (Activities)
• What resources do we need in order to put these activities in place? (Resources)
• When can/should we have this activity up and running? (Timelines)
• Who will take responsibility for pushing this initiative forward? (Person responsible)

The template on pages 18-19 can help you organize your activity plans.

For example:

Step 5. Follow up and revise your activities

Once your workplace health promotion activities are up and running, you’ll want to know what’s working and what isn’t. Reviewing your activities can help you improve what you’re already doing and justify continuing or expanding activities. It doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming – in fact, it may be as simple as keeping records of how many people attended activities and asking for their comments and suggestions for change.

• Determine if you met your activity objectives.
• Get ongoing feedback from employees, including suggestions for improving initiatives.
• Keep a tally of how many people participate.
• Re-evaluate your plans, taking into account any changes in timing or available resources.
• Adjust your plan, as required.
• Demonstrate your own commitment and enthusiasm by taking part in activities.
• Update the resource section on page 23 as your community contacts grow!
• Monitor absenteeism and other cost drivers.

An evaluation guide

Effective evaluation is more about understanding how we learn and change than it is about judgment and measurement.

Evaluation does not have to be a daunting task, but it is vitally important to the success of your workplace health initiative. Evaluation is about gathering information to find out:

• if the initiative is meeting objectives
• what is working and what is not
• what improvements are needed to make it work

One example of an evaluation tool is the logic model. The logic model consists of common elements, showing what the program is supposed to do, for whom and why.

What?

• components – what it is about (e.g., stress reduction initiative)
• activities — what you are doing or what services you are providing (e.g., ask employees for input into decision making at monthly staff meetings, arrange for stress management information session at lunch hour)

Who?

• target groups — who you are doing it to or for (e.g., all employees or certain priority groups)

Why?

• short-term outcomes — the direct results of the program
  on its participants (e.g., reduced stress, more satisfied
  employees)
• long-term outcomes — changes your program is intended to achieve
  “down the road” (e.g., a 10% reduction in absenteeism in two years;
  a 5% reduction on health care costs in two years; a 2% increase in
  productivity; improved employee morale; an enhanced corporate image;
  reduced turnover and lower health care costs; improved morale; less
  absenteeism; more productive employees)

There is no “right” way to create a logic model — in fact, you may find it
easier to start in the middle. Every program should be able to undertake some
type of evaluation activity.

Advantages of creating a logic model:

• summarizes the key elements of the program
• explains the rationale behind activities
• clarifies the difference between the activities and the intended outcomes of the program
• shows the cause-and-effect relationships between the activities and the outcomes, i.e., which activities will lead to which outcomes.

Logic model tips:

• Practice makes perfect! The first time is always the hardest. ... it will get easier.
• Strive for simplicity. Follow the KISS principle: Keep It Short and Simple.
  Don’t try to include all the details of your plan. Try to fit the whole logic model on one page.
• Discuss the logic model with staff involved at all levels.
• Evaluation should be based on a common understanding of
  activities and their connection to expected outcomes.

Management guru Dr. W.E. Deming once said that “every organization is
perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.” Remind the committee of
this as they establish their working arrangements and begin to work with the
target group(s).

Adapted from A Program Evaluation Tool Kit: The Blue Print for Public
Health Management. Ontario Ministry of Health & PHRED Ottawa Carleton Health
Department.

Contact information

For more information about workplace health promotion programs and services, contact:

Health Canada at (613) 954-8857 or Surf the Health Canada Web site:

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hppb/workplacehealth/

There are also many municipal/regional/provincial organizations
that can be of help and many of them offer services and products
free of charge. Try contacting one of the following organizations in
your area:

• local public health department
• local parks and recreation centres
• family counselling centre
• private counselling groups for employee assistance
• Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety:
  • Tel: 1-800-263-8466
  • E-mail: inquiries@ccohs.ca
  • Web: http://www.ccohs.com
• alcohol and drug programs
• hospitals and medical centres
• municipal governments
• mental health services
• provincial health ministries
• community information centres
• voluntary, non-profit organizations (e.g., lung association, cancer association)