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Getting Started and Managing Active Living
at Work Strategies
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Strategic positioning of active living at work
- Create a 'quality culture' and work environment that supports individual
employee health and productivity;
- Integrate the Active Living at Work program with the organization's
Human Resources strategy;
- Foster partnership/cooperation with employees, their associations
and unions; and
- Engage employees in developing active living at work strategies and
projects.
Employee benefits associated with active living at work
- Provides employees with an understanding about and the tools needed
to manage their own health;
- Provides employees with access to information (and education) on a
wide variety of health and wellness topics;
- Helps individual employees become more skilled in:
- self-mastery;
- self-care;
- self-management;
- self-responsibility; and
- individual stress management.
- Focuses on the employees and their families, as well as the
communities in which they live; and
- Contributes to individual employee satisfaction and productivity.
Company benefits associated with active living at work
- Fulfills the need for 'sharing responsibility' between the company
and its employees;
- May achieve a bottom line payback from the adopted strategy;
- Provides a platform for union/management cooperation and support;
- Supports what the business and organizational culture needs to be
in the future (i.e., adaptive to change, self-responsible, self-mastery,
etc.);
- Supports the business case (i.e., makes a contribution to controlling
organizational costs in a concrete, demonstrable way);
- Provides a way of measuring the effectiveness of anything that is
put in place; and
- Reduces the incidence of stress-related illness and injury.
Employees, the company, and the union should
all see these benefits as both desirable and sustainable.
Benefits not limited to the corporate world
All businesses, no matter what their size, can benefit from workplace
wellness initiatives.
For many small companies, it may not be feasible to establish facilities
on the premises but they can make arrangements for their employees to
participate in community or health club facilities. They can also use
flex-time arrangements so that employees have more opportunities to participate.
Making active choices easy choices helps to improve
employee health and every employer benefits if their employees are healthy
and productive.
Health at work is aimed at fostering wellness. Organizations are beginning
to be held accountable for ensuring that the environment in which people
work fosters health not disease.
To foster wellness, organizations need to understand the precursors to
disease, particularly those related to stress.
Wellness is the personal experience of physical and mental health. Home
stress and job stress affect wellness - and the measure of wellness
is usually self-reported health status.
There are three major contributors to wellness:
- Health practices - the voluntary activities of individuals
that affect their health
- Personal resources -- the psychological and social means
by which people cope with environmental stress
- The environment in which they are trying to cope, which includes:
their surroundings, the conditions in which they work, their circumstances,
as well as the supports and opportunities available to them to maintain
or improve their health.
The work environment can help or hinder an individual's efforts to reduce
stressors in his/her life. Workplace
Wellness Programs Provide Benefits to Individuals and Organizations.
Workplace stress or job-related stress can be attributed to employers
if:
- The workplace defeats the employees' sense of control over their work
and their health which, in turn, reduces motivation to pursue positive
health practices; and
- The workplace makes it difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle and
pursue positive health practices.
Personal health practices include:
- Physical activity;
- Eating;
- Smoking;
- Sleeping; and
- Drinking alcohol.
- Generate the idea
- Establish the rationale
- Form an employee committee
- Test the feasibility in your organization
- Check for employee interest
- Prepare the proposal
These steps are consistent with program and policy development initiatives
in any organizational setting. A champion, management team, or group of
employees usually generate the idea and then follow this six-step process
to put the idea into action.
Developing the active living program
The following paragraphs highlight the key elements in developing an
effective active living program:
Senior executive to champion the initiative
Generally speaking, corporate initiatives succeed best when there is
a senior executive championing the initiative and a planning team comprised
of workers from all levels and areas of the organization reporting to
the champion. In a unionized environment, union leadership
should also be engaged.
Creating the planning team
There is a need for data from many areas of the organization in developing
the Business Case for Active Living. To be effective and sustainable,
active living must be incorporated into the organization's planning framework
and become part of the structured benefits the company provides for its
employees.
To ensure that this integration occurs, people from the following areas
in the organization must be included on the planning team:
- Compensation and Benefits
- Human Resources
- Health and Safety
- Health Promotion
- Disability Management
- Finance
- Internal Communications
- Union/Employee Association
As well, the team will need some enthusiastic proponents of active living
in the workplace to mobilize the energy needed to get a program introduced
and implemented.
Criteria that contribute to program success
- The program meets needs of employees both in terms of their physical
health and overall sense of well-being.
- The process is well-planned, officially introduced and includes a
health education component.
- The program positioning incorporates the idea that employee health
and well-being is primarily the responsibility of the employee, with
thoughtful and sustained support from the organization and, where appropriate,
the union.
- The organization needs to be seen to be providing access to active
living at work as a tool to help employees maintain and improve their
health.
- The program is flexible and allows employees to choose how best to
incorporate active living into their daily lives.
- Individual health management is visibly supported by senior management.
- Communications activities link wellness programs to overall business
goals such as adaptability, resilience, competitiveness, productivity,
individual responsibility, etc.
Much of the discussion in the literature on physical activity in the
workplace suggests integration in many forms, including:
- Integration of active living programs with other workplace wellness
programs;
- Integration of individual, environmental and organizational approaches;
and
- Integration of health promotion/wellness efforts with the overall
business strategies of the organization.
All functions within the organization that have an 'investment'
in the health of employees should be active in -- and committed to --
the plan.
Program interventions should link with the following internal structures
and processes:
- Communications, Public Relations and Recruiting strategies
- Training & Development
- Human Resources strategic plan
- Compensation & Benefits strategy
- Occupational Health & Safety strategic plan
- Disability Management process
- Food Services plan
- Budgeting process for Finance & Risk Management
- Long-term Strategic Plan for the organization
- Union Collective Agreement
Health promotion initiatives should be integrated into a corporate health
strategy featuring three interactive systems:
- Job demands and worker characteristics;
- Work environment; and
- Extra-organizational influences.
Organizations will demand measurable results
To prove that an active living and wellness program is indeed beneficial
to the organization, it is important to establish a benchmark for employee
health and wellness before the program begins.
Benchmark research should examine:
- Employee activity levels before the program is started;
- Employee health;
- Current costs of illness to benefit programs;
- Stress levels;
- Absenteeism patterns;
- Employee satisfaction;
- Retention rates; and
- Productivity and performance.
After the program has been running for at least a year, follow-up research
should be undertaken to measure the short-term results of the active living
intervention.
Effective communications and education -- an important component
- Health and wellness have to be incorporated into the organization's
internal communications program.
- Senior management needs to demonstrate/articulate its support for:
- Optimal employee health;
- Individual employee choice and self responsibility in the matter
of health; and
- The company's commitment to support healthy lifestyle choices
and productive work environments.
- Education, awareness and motivation opportunities should be available
to all employees as part of a general strategy. These should focus on:
- Cardiovascular fitness
- Musculoskeletal health; including back health, repetitive strain
and ergonomics;
- Stress management; and
-
Health self-management skills, such as accessing community resources,
appropriate use of the health-care system, and self-management
of common and/or chronic health conditions.
Corporate philosophy as a foundation for employee health
The following principles and values lay a foundation for a corporate
culture that embraces intervention programs like wellness and active living
programs:
- People are an organization's most important resource, and each has
a unique, value-adding contribution to make.
- Concern and care for the health of people is essential to achieve
business success.
- Healthy employees enhance an organization's competitive position.
- A company with healthy employees has a positive impact on its community
and customers.
- A change in individual employee health metrics can be an early indicator
of changes in other aspects of business performance.
- Optimal employee health is compatible with and supportive of excellence
in other aspects of business activity.
- Health, like other aspects of business, can be managed and self-managed.
- People adopt values that are emphasized by their organizational leaders.
- Employee health is an integral part of the business and is built on
the belief that all injuries -- and most illnesses -- are preventable.
- Every employee at every level has responsibility for creating a healthy
work environment and promoting healthy lifestyles.
Motivating staff to participate
One of the major challenges organizations face is motivating and sustaining
staff commitment to active living interventions. The same can be said
for health clubs who have many more members than regular participants.
Ultimately, the organization can only educate and provide the opportunity
- it is the employee that must choose a more active lifestyle. However,
the organization can undertake many activities that help make active
choices easy choices.
Sustained communications/education, encouragement, corporate philosophy
and behaviour are the critical factors that influence motivation and sustained
participation.
Many of the studies on workplace active living and wellness programs
and strategies have small sample sizes and/or low participation rates
in the programs.
Most of these studies indicate a need for ways to increase employee participation,
and therefore have more impact on employee health, organizational effectiveness
and the quality of any research conducted.
Dishman, et al (1998) report from their meta-analysis of published literature
that participation rates in workplace active living programs are at
best 20-30% of the workplace population.
Other studies have looked specifically at the determinants of high participation
rates in programs, determining the barriers, and the factors contributing
to increased participation?
Their findings can be summarized
as follows:
- The determinants that affect participation rates are:
- Attitude toward the program;
- Self-efficacy expectation; and
- Social support.
- Promotion for programs should focus first on health benefits and second
on overcoming barriers.
- Sustained promotion/marketing of programs is critical to participation
rates.
- Barriers that can be addressed when structuring the program include:
- Convenient times and locations;
- Flex-time to allow employees to participate;
- Onsite facilities; and
- Management support/marketing.
- Participation is dependent on organizational context, therefore staff
must participate in development.
- Targeted stage-of-change based messages are effective, which means
that organizations need benchmark information about their audiences.
Typically, performance measurement enables an organization to:
- Determine if a program has been implemented as planned (process
measurement);
- Determine if a program has met its quality assurance criteria (process
measurement);
- Assess if a program is attracting the volume of participants that
it intended (process measurement);
- Document the individual employee health impacts of a program (impact
measurement);
- Identify the health outcomes of a program as it relates to disability
management and absenteeism rates (outcome measurement);
- Determine the cost benefit of a program (outcome measurement);
and
- Establish whether an ongoing commitment to the program is justified.
Process measurements
Process measurements review short-term program/intervention oriented
results — quality control measures aimed at determining if the
program/intervention itself has achieved its objectives.
Typical process measurements include:
- Participation rates;
- Adherence levels (if a long-term program);
- Participant satisfaction;
- Perceived value; and
- Management commitment.
Impact measurements
Impact measurements review medium-term individual employee results.
They identify whether or not intended individual health outcomes are occurring
on a personal level.
Typical impact measurements may include:
- Decreased Employee Health Risk - usually through health-risk
assessments;
- Improved Health Beliefs and Attitudes - through health surveys;
- Improved Perceived Health Status - through health surveys;
- Readiness for Change - through health surveys;
- Improved Employee Satisfaction, as measured by a questionnaire;
- Employee perception of greater personal power and control over their
work environment, as measured by certain stress indicators;
- Reduced incidence of new cardiovascular cases in STD and LTD; and
- Reduced incidence of new musculoskeletal injuries.
Outcome measurements
Outcome measurements are longer term, organization-oriented results
that indicate whether or not a program is generating the intended economic
outcomes for the organization.
Typical outcome measures include:
- Decreased incidence of illness or injury associated with stress, cardiovascular
and musculoskeletal disorders;
- Reduction in the length of a disability associated with stress, cardiovascular
and musculoskeletal disorders;
- Cost savings in health benefits such as long-term disability, short-term
disability (and/or weekly indemnity), Workers' Compensation, and drug
utilization associated with stress, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal
disorders; and
- Financial measurements, including cost/benefit analysis and Return
on Investment calculations.
Making it work with active living in the workplace
The Canadian Centre for Active Living in the Workplace has produced an
excellent resource to help organizations set up and sustain active living
programs.
Making it Work is a 'how to' workbook for those in the preliminary
stages of program planning and development. It is designed to introduce
practical ideas to help you and your organization develop new perspectives
and create effective approaches to active living.
This workbook can be obtained by contacting:
The Canadian Council
for Health and Active Living at Work (CCHALW)
c/o Canada Safety Council
Ph: 613-739-1535
Walk and Roll -- A guide to active transportation to,
from, and at the workplace
Walk and Roll is a resource that calls on Canadian workers and
employers to work collaboratively to develop opportunities for employees
to engage in daily physical activity. The Walk and Roll guide
warns against the critical health risks to Canadian workers who have become
dangerously reliant on motorized transportation in a new economy that
obliges many of them to sit all day at a computer, on the phone, or in
meetings.
Developed by a multi-disciplinary team of experts from across Canada,
the guide outlines new ways of approaching a workday, from both an employer
and employee perspective.
This guide can be obtained by visiting the Go
for Green web site.
Healthy Workplace Awards Program
For the first time in 1999, the new Healthy
Workplace Awards  program recognized organizations which promote,
encourage, support and offer exemplary health-related programs in the
workplace.
The criteria - developed in a partnership between Health Canada,
the National
Quality Institute and professionals from the health and safety sector
- address five key areas:
- Leadership;
- Planning;
- People Focus;
- Process Management; and
- Outcomes.
To earn recognition, employers must demonstrate that employee health
and well-being are an integral and strategic part of the way they do business.
1999 Recipients
- Healthy Workplace, Trophy MDS Nordion
- Healthy Workplace, Trophy TELUS - BC (Corporate Health Services)
- Healthy Workplace, Certificate Celestica International Inc.
Typical worksite active living initiatives that have been successful
Modest investments have helped some businesses make active choices
easy choices for their employees. For example,
- Access to bike racks, showers and change areas;
- Lifestyle health and wellness newsletters that provide information
on community resources;
- Company recreational events such as lunchtime walking programs, activity
days, support for summer active campaigns/activities, ski days, golf
days and team sports;
- Flex time to allow employees to participate in physical activity;
and
- Shared or subsidized programs in cooperation with community or private
fitness centres.
Supporting research
Click here to access the supporting
research for this section.
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