Organisational Health Behavior Climate: Organisations Can Encourage Healthy Eating and Physical Exercise

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-dimensional measure of organisational climate covering two domains of health behavior (healthy eating, physical exercise). To develop and validate the climate measure, we conducted three independent studies. In Study 1, items were generated and evaluated in expert ratings and confirmatory factor analyses (N 5 483 employees), resulting in a total of 24 items comprising three dimensions (values and expectations, organisational practices, communication) within the domains of healthy eating and physical exercise. Study 2 crossvalidated the factor structure of this measure of organisational health behavior climate (OHBC), and examined its nomological net. Based on data from 464 employees, we found significant correlations among OHBC and other dimensions of organisational climate (e.g. employee welfare, safety climate), healthy eating and exercise identity, eating behavior, and body mass index (BMI). Study 3 demonstrated within-organisation agreement and between-organisation differences in OHBC, and replicated the factor structure with a multi-level data set (N 5 1,077 employees from 48 organisations). This new measure assesses organisational eating climate and exercise climate in a comprehensive way, opening up multiple avenues for future research and evaluation studies in organisations.

The Importance of Team Health Climate for Health-Related Outcomes of White-Collar Workers

“…At the time this study was conducted, recently published short scales to measure team health climate were not yet available ( Sonnentag and Pundt, 2016 ; Zweber et al, 2016 ), and existing scales did not explicitly focus on teams (e.g., they also include questions about supervisors; Basen-Engquist et al, 1998 ). Therefore, we conducted a pilot study using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform to gather validity evidence for our team health climate scale.…”

“…Consistent with previous work on health climates in the occupational health psychology literature ( Ribisl and Reischl, 1993 ; Basen-Engquist et al, 1998 ; Sonnentag and Pundt, 2013 , 2016 ; Zweber et al, 2016 ), we define team health climate as employees’ shared perceptions of the extent to which their team is concerned, cares, and communicates about health issues. In line with Morgeson and Hofmann (1999) , we assume that team health climate emerges through a bottom-up process during which employee interactions form a collective construct at the team level that, in turn, impacts on health-related outcomes.…”

“…Furthermore, results by Ernsting et al (2013) showed that health climate at baseline positively predicted affective commitment at follow-up: those who perceived a positive health climate showed higher levels of affective commitment 5 months later. Sonnentag and Pundt (2016) defined organizational health behavior climate as “employee perceptions of organizational efforts to promote health behavior” (p. 260). In three studies, these authors developed and validated scales to assess two dimensions of organizational health behavior climate (i.e., healthy eating, physical exercise).…”

“…Climate theory suggests that, due to social norms and expectations, employees are motivated to behave consistent with common practices in their team ( Ehrhart and Naumann, 2004 ). Moreover, a positive team health climate indicates that knowledge, skills, and support for maintaining health and healthy behaviors exist in the team which, in turn, should enhance health communication and outcomes among team members ( Sonnentag and Pundt, 2016 ).…”

Organizational level factors and their association with smoking-related initiatives and outcomes at small and very small workplaces

“…Workplace health promotion is also positively correlated with health-related quality of life (Zweber, Henning, & Magley, 2016). Organizational health behavior climate, defined as the shared perceptions related to a company's approach to employee health behaviors and promotion, is correlated with healthy eating and BMI (Sonnentag & Pundt, 2016). Better workplace health climates are also related to greater perceived performance of employees by supervisors (Cha, 2015) and higher affective commitment to the organization (Ernsting, Schwarzer, Lippke, & Schneider, 2013).…”