Workplace health promotion

Workplace health promotion (WHP) is, according to the Luxembourg Declaration of 1997, the combined efforts of employers, employees and society to improve the health and well-being of people at work. The term workplace health promotion further denotes a comprehensive analysis and design at human – organization – work levels strategically and methodologically aiming at development of health resources in the enterprise.

The World Health Organization considers work place as one of the priority settings for health promotion into the 21st century" because it influences "physical, mental, economic and social well-being" and "offers an ideal setting and infrastructure to support the promotion of health of a large audience“. The Luxembourg Declaration provides that health and well-being of employees at work can be achieved through combination of a) improving the organization and the working environment, b) promoting active participation, and c) encouraging personal development.

Workplace health promotion strategies also combine alleviation of health risk factors with enhancement of health strengthening factors. This concept is also formulated as integration of a pathogenesis that addresses diseases with salutogenesis that promotes health and well-being.

A guideline recommended in the Luxembourg Declaration includes:

1. Participation, i.e. all staff have to be involved;

2. Integration, i.e. workplace health promotion has to be integrated in all important decisions and in all areas of organisations;

3. Project management, i.e. all measures and programmes have to be oriented to a problem-solving cycle: needs analysis, setting priorities, planning, implementation, continuous control and evaluation;

4. Comprehensiveness: i.e. workplace health promotion includes individual-directed and environment-directed measures from various fields. It combines the strategy of risk reduction with the strategy of the development of protection factors and health potentials.

The positive impact of implementation of workplace health promotion programmes on productivity is widely discussed. The first logical step is to examine the impact of workplace health promotion on absenteeism as productivity is impossible if an employee is absent. However, the potential of increasing productivity is much greater when presenteeism is analysed as it presents the situation when an employee is being registered as attending and being paid with lower performance due to a health condition or other causes.

Relations with Occupational health and safety
Broadly, the category of OHS (occupational health and safety) refers to efforts to protect workers against health and safety hazards on the job. While, as mentioned above, WHP is combined efforts of employers, employees and society to improve the health and well-being of people at work. Thus, traditional OHS concerns with protection of health and WHP concerns with improvement of health. Furthermore, WHP also relies on active participation and initiatives of the employees together with the efforts of the employers.

However, OHS and WHP should not be understood as opposing or separate concepts. Basing on the European Council Directive 89/391/EC, the Luxembourg Declaration highlights the need for reorientation of the traditional OHS rather than abandoning it.

The Health Communication Unit, Canada, supports comprehensive workplace health promotion encompassing the categories of OHS, voluntary health practices and organisational culture. Klane’s Education Information Training Hub, LLC SM (KEITH SM) claims that synergetic relations of WHP and OHS will result in a "total that is greater than the sum of the parts". Thus, it advises "there are proven additional benefits to merging or integrating the two programs into one overarching Employee Health, Safety, and Wellness (HSW) Program" though "both can be implemented independent of each other".

WorkHealth Programme of Victoria State Government, Australia, states in its guidelines for prospective applicants for WHP grants that there is an evidence showing that "where workplace health promotion and the OHS program are mutually reinforcing, workers are likely to be more responsive to the activities designed to encourage healthy behaviours and lifestyle change."

"In the ‘Workplace Wellness‘ paper published by medibank solutions and Price Waterhouse Coopers discusses the importance of your staffs health and overall wellness of workplaces. It again discusses Workplace Fruit as a key contributing factor for providing health solutions at the workplace to assist your staff with curbing the adverse health effects of unhealthy eating."