Week 3 Flashcards
Work Health Promotion
Shift of focus of health promotion at the worksite
It was initially focussed on safety and medical risk factors, but is now also more focused on well-being, mental health and stress-management.
Why focus on WHP
- Life-style is connected with mortality and morbidity
- Less absenteeism
- More productivity
- Less health care costs
- Advantages of the worksite as a setting
Return on investment
How much you get pack as a company for each dollar that you invest in WHP.
Life for Life program (at Johnson & Johnson)
A WHP programme for employees and their families that focussed on a healthier lifestyle and cost containment. Had favorable results on: weight, physical fintess, blood pressure, smoking and absenteeism.
StayWell program
They used socio-cultural processes, like installing an informal leader / action team to get people engaged. They also changed the environment to a healthy lifestyle supportive environment and created support groups.
Advantages of worksite as a setting for health promotion
- Access to a large population of adults
- You can also reach the difficult to reach people
- Convenience of the target group
- Stable population for a long period of time
- Social context
- Availability of organisation structure
- Possibility to intervene at different levels
Effects of AHRF
Adding a personal assesment with feedback is a useful way to stimulate the uptake of WHP intervention.
Crucial elements for WHP programs
- Reach / participant rate
- Creating behavior change (not only short term changes)
- Matching components of WHP to employees interests
- Creating a culture of health
- Using incentives / rewards
- Support from the top leadership
E-healht + individual coaching
The individual coaching had a lot of extra benefits like losing weight and more physical activity.
Criticism on stress management focus on the individual
- Often low participation
- Often not attracting the target population (stressed people)
- Focus on employees not coping adequately (blaming the victim)
- Avoids employers to have to make a change
Job-demands-resources model
The employees well-being can be influenced by and result in:
- Strain and burnout: because of job and personal factors.
- Work engagement: because of job, personal and non-work factors.
Physical activity and job type
Physical activity decreases in jobs that are:
- High strains
- Passive jobs
These jobs also cause people who are already active to be less active.
Healthier work as Brabantia
Focussed on the job conditions and asked the employees for their input. Created autonomous task groups which made employees to have more task extensions and influence in what they did.
The participative action research approach
Employee = expert. Involves employees to participate in defining the problem, developing methodology and intervention, implementing the intervention and evaluation the results.
Effectiveness of stress management programs
Combining individual level and organisational level intervention is more effective that just 1 .
