Ministry of Health

Taking Action: Tips and Resources for Employers and Employees

Create a Healthy Work Environment

Taking a comprehensive approach to workplace health is an effective way to create healthy work environments. The basic idea is “healthy people in healthy and safe workplaces.” A healthy work environment has organizational cultures, systems, and management practices that support employee health and wellness goals.

Workers in B.C. will be better able to achieve optimal health when they work in a healthy environment that they have played an active role in creating and sustaining. The process of creating healthy and safe workplaces is itself healthy.

A one-size fits all approach to creating a healthy work environment doesn’t work because of the diversity of workplaces. General guidelines can help you understand the key ingredients you’ll need and prompt you to develop an action plan that fits your unique characteristics.

Guiding principles outline the path that managers and employees need to take together if they want to achieve a high quality, healthy work environment.

Did You Know? ¹

Employee priorities for improving or maintaining their health include:

increase physical activity (69.1%),
remove/cope better with stress and worry (66.3%),
lose weight (52.8%),
eat better (34.2%) and
quit smoking/smoke less (17.7%).

Supportive culture and values: Creating and maintaining a healthy workplace requires a supportive culture that clearly values employees and is trust-based. Ideally, the process of creating a healthy workplace should be designed to strengthen trust.
Leadership: Commitment from top management is critical and must take the form of visible leadership on health issues. Employees judge commitment by the actions of senior management. Leadership must also be exercised throughout the organization, especially by line managers.
Use a broad definition of health: Good mental and physical health means more than the absence of illness, injury, and disease. It also means leading a balanced life, developing one’s potential, making a meaningful contribution to the organization, and having a say in workplace decisions.
Participative team approach: Implementing a healthy workplace strategy requires an integrated approach, guided by teams that include representatives from management, health and safety, human resources, employees, and unions. This is not just a health issue. Direct employee involvement in all stages is especially critical to success.
Customized plan: Collaboratively develop a workplace health policy and action plan with clear goals. The policy and plan must be tailored to the business context, workforce characteristics, and documented gaps in the work environment. Learn from each change introduced and refine the plan accordingly.
Link to strategic goals: Clearly link health issues and outcomes to the organization’s strategic goals. Integrate health and well-being objectives into the organization’s business planning process, so that over time, all management decisions take health into account.
Ongoing support: Allocate resources that ensure continuity to healthy workplace actions. Provide training, especially to managers at all levels, to sustain the initiative and embed health into how the organization operates.
Evaluate and communicate: Open and continuous communication is a key success factor in any organizational change initiative, and health is no different. Consistently evaluate outcomes and keep top management informed about the impact of healthy workplace issues on business results.

Source: Graham S. Lowe, Healthy Workplace Strategies: Creating Change and Achieving Results. Health Canada, January 2004

What Employers Can Do

What Employees Can Do

Employers can create truly healthy work environments by:

Regularly communicate the importance of a healthy and safe workplace to employees.
Subsidize and support employees to attend off-site workshops, training and conferences on health, wellness and safety issues.
Include employee health, safety and wellness issues in management training.
Develop and implement a healthy workplace plan or strategy that includes actions and goals and involves employees in the process, seeking their participation and input at all stages.
Establish a healthy workplace / wellness committee to engage employees so they ‘own’ the improvements.
Evaluate the business benefits of a healthy workplace and report health and safety statistics.
Include a commitment to the health, safety and well-being of employees in the organization’s mission and/or vision statement and include healthy workplace goals in your business plan.

Employees can contribute to creating a “culture” of health and wellness in their workplace by becoming personal champions. Here are some things you can do, either on your own or in collaboration with co-workers:

Find opportunities at staff meetings and on health and safety committees to propose “doable” ideas for creating a healthy work environment.
Ask your employer for support to attend off-site workshops, training and conferences on health, wellness and safety issues. Offer to report back what you learn to others in your workplace.
Discuss the idea of developing a healthy workplace plan or strategy and share information on how to do this.
Propose a healthy workplace / wellness committee to management, pointing out the “business benefits” of taking further action to create healthy and safe work environments.
Build from what already is happening in the workplace, so that next steps seem easy and logical, rather than a “new program.”
Share the information on this website with your co-workers, supervisor and other managers who you know that support healthy workplace goals.

Resources

Given the time we spend at work, the choices we make on the job can have a huge impact on our health and wellness. In addition, the policies, management practices and cultures in your workplace can promote mental well-being, work-life balance, safety, and other goals that enhance both health and productivity.

Where you start on the path to creating a healthy workplace depends on where you’re at, and who you are. Creating a healthy work environment in a small business requires a slightly different approach from what works in larger organizations.

If you’re just beginning, you may want to start small and scan your workplace for ideas that might help people be more active, eat healthier foods, achieve better work-life balance, and feel more supported in their work. If you have a human resources department, you might want to develop a business or strategic plan to support a more comprehensive approach.

As a start, this web site provides support and resources so that employers and employees can take action on creating healthy workplaces.

Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month each October promotes healthy workplaces all year round using a comprehensive approach to workplace health. This website features tools, resources and research to apply to improve business productivity and performance as well as employee health.

Other complementary resources include:

Active Communities Workplace Workbook provides information, resources and tools to help develop and implement a workplace physical activity initiative.	Creating Healthy Workplaces is an overview of a comprehensive approach to creating healthy work environments. This 31 page guide was produced by the Industrial Accident Prevention Association (IAPA).
Guide to Developing and Implementing the Workplace Health System in Small Business developed by Health Canada.	The Art of Implementing a Great Workplace Wellness Program in a Small Business Setting outlines a similar approach from the Wellness Council of America
Healthy Workplace for Small Organizations: 10-Point Criteria and Self-Evaluation Tool. (Available from the National Quality Institute--$65 for non-members)	Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety promotes a safe and healthy working environment by providing information and advice about occupational health and safety.