Culture, management and finances as key aspects for healthy workplace initiatives

Abstract

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.

Associations between health culture, health behaviors, and health-related outcomes: A cross-sectional study

“…In general, workplace health culture was positively associated with all health-related outcomes, which supported several previous qualitative studies [5, 7, 27]. Variance analyses results showed that individual health culture, beneficial health effects of direct leaders, and health culture at the workplace level were all positively associated with the 3 health-related outcomes.…”

“…Golaszewski et al [6] presented a conceptual model for addressing the creation of supportive environments for worksite health promotion settings, and emphasized the importance of improving the cultural environment of workplaces for health promotion. Results of a qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with representatives from 31 organizations representing small, medium and large businesses in Western Australia showed that improving health culture had an important impact on health promotion [7]. However, most existing studies lack support of convincing quantitative data [8].…”

Size Matters: A Latent Class Analysis of Workplace Health Promotion Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Likelihood of Action in Small Workplaces

“…To the authors' knowledge, no standardized tools for assessing knowledge, attitudes, practices and likelihood of action for workplace health implementation exists. However, our survey instrument is informed by an established theoretical framework [26,27] and years of research on workplace health promotion [3,[28][29][30][31][32][33]. In addition, we assessed the construct reliability and convergent validity using Cronbach's alpha and factor loadings, respectively.…”

“…We were unable to find a specific and validated survey that measured knowledge, attitudes and practices for WHP. Therefore, the second literature review focused on examining the components on the KAP conceptual framework (Figure 1) to better understand the barrier and enablers to implementing WHP [3,[28][29][30][31][32][33]. For a more detailed explanation of the questions included in the survey instrument, the scale of measure, and the concepts included, see Appendix A.…”

“…enablers to implementing WHP [3,[28][29][30][31][32][33]. For a more detailed explanation of the questions included in the survey instrument, the scale of measure, and the concepts included, see Appendix A. Construct reliability of the survey instrument was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability to determine internal consistency, the extent to which all items in a questionnaire contribute towards measuring the same construct.…”