The aim of this study was to qualitatively explore the barriers and enablers to implementing healthy workplace initiatives in a sample of workplaces based in Perth, Western Australia. In-depth interviews were conducted with representatives from 31 organizations representing small, medium and large businesses in the Perth metropolitan area which reported having healthy workplace initiatives. In total, 43 factors were mentioned as influencing the implementation of healthy workplace initiatives. Factors appearing to exert the most influence on the implementation of health promoting initiatives in this sample were culture; support from managers and staff; collaboration with industry providers; financial resources circumstances and the physical environment. These factors appeared to be mutually reinforcing and interconnected. Findings suggest there may be merit in applying an organizational development lens to the implementation of workplace health promotion initiatives as this could assist in leveraging enablers and minimizing barriers.
Although none of the workplaces reported using a formal organizational change model when implementing their healthy workplace initiatives, there did appear to be perceived merit in using the steps in Kotter's model.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.