Developing a healthy workplace strategy.

Whether you are a company president or an HR professional, embarking on a strategic approach to a healthier workplace is a long-term investment, but there is a step-by-step approach that you can take. The following strategies are designed to build the foundation and set the direction for organizational health, and to reinforce this through healthy leadership.

1. Acknowledge the value of people within your organization in your vision and/or mission statement

Reflecting the importance of your human resources in your vision and mission makes a statement about who you are as an organization. It is that first plunge or first step toward becoming an employer of choice--toward recognizing that the well-being of your employees is paramount to your success. It is a public statement of who you are, and a very personal commitment to your employees that the culture you want to reinforce is one that values their well-being.

Tips:

Plan an occasional review of your organization's mission and vision statements. What values does it reflect? Is the value of people acknowledged?

Plan ways to gather input from employees and other stakeholders in this process.

2. Develop a written policy on employee well-being for your organization

A healthy workplace policy articulates the extent to which you are committed to protecting and promoting the health of your employees by providing a physical and social environment that is as healthy as possible. It is more specific than the recognition you have made in your mission or vision, and clarifies roles and responsibilities, durability (if key people change, the company policy still stands), and mechanisms for change.

3. Determine key success factors for workplace and employee health issues and link these to your strategic direction

Appropriately identifying the key success factors and priorities for your workplace health strategy are critical to setting the foundation for a workplace health plan.

The key success factors are the components, activities or actions that when established will contribute to the success of your healthy workplace strategy. For instance, key success factors for most organizations include:

* Senior management commitment

* Union buy-in 

* Employee buy-in

Tips for Determining Critical Success Factors:

Brainstorm factors or actions that are important to developing a healthy workplace strategy in your own workplace.

From the above list, ask the question, "if this component were not in place, would our organization's workplace health strategy still be likely to succeed?" The factors to which you answered no, are the critical success factors of your organization's healthy workplace strategy.

Tips for Identifying Priorities:

Priorities are the areas that your healthy workplace strategy should focus on first. The easiest way to identify these is to ask, "Why does our organization want to begin a healthy workplace strategy?" and, "What do we hope the outcomes will be?"

Possible answers may be, "to improve the health of employees" or, "to improve retention."

These types of statements are quite general and hard to measure or attribute to specific program components. Thus, when determining the priorities for your workplace strategy, try to make them both tangible and specific so that goals, objectives and program components can be easily derived from them. For example, 'improving the health of employees' can be made more tangible by assessing the ways in which your organization measures health. One possible priority that may result could be, "to reduce the number of back injuries by 10 percent over the next 12 month period."

4. Incorporate goals and objectives on workplace and employee health and well-being into your organization's strategic planning process

What are the major goals of your organization's strategic plan? How can organizational health strategies tie into these goals? For example, if maintaining a talented and healthy workforce is key to achieving the high quality production or customer service you strive for, your healthy workplace goals to achieve this objective should be incorporated into the strategic plan.

Tips:

Set aside time for your healthy workplace team to review the organization's current strategic plan and determine what workplace health goals and objectives might help achieve that vision.

If you have an annual strategic planning process in your organization, provide managers and directors who are part of the process with a copy of any healthy workplace goals, objectives or principles that are available to assist them in the strategic planning process.

Present a healthy workplace plan to your senior executive that clearly indicates how the workplace health goals and objectives are linked with and can help achieve the overall business goals of the organization.

5. Ensure that there is a mechanism in place to renew relevant occupational health and safety legislation and that your organization is in compliance

Occupational health and safety legislation defines the minimum elements that are required and must be implemented in your organization.

As part of your healthy workplace policy, include a policy statement on occupational health and safety that describes the organization's safety policy, identifies who is accountable for OSHAA programs and procedures for reviewing legislation annually.

6. Ensure that a commitment to a healthy workplace environment is demonstrated to employees by the management team

Although a challenging task, gaining senior management support and commitment is critical to ensuring the sustainability of any healthy workplace plan.

Tips:

Create a business case that positions workplace health as an investment in the long-term growth and success of the organization and that is based on solid evidence.

Include in the business case:

* Best-practice data

* Evidence on proven outcomes or workplace health initiatives such as reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, improved morale, reduced short & long term disability claims, reduced injuries and reduced EAP utilization rates

* Economic costs of poor health in the workplace, such as replacement costs

* A demonstrable return on investment of workplace health initiatives by linking your organization's workplace health data with the bottom line

Identify the ways in which you would like to see management commit to a healthy workplace environment. For instance, the allocation of monetary and human resources to form a healthy workplace committee and conduct a comprehensive needs assessment in the first year, and an annual investment (dollar amount) per employee during the second year, to meet the needs identified in the assessment. Indicate how the return on this investment will be evaluated and over what time period.

Be sure to emphasize that addressing health does not need to be complicated or expensive. Small simple measures can be effective.

7. Work at improving the interpersonal skills and leadership abilities of management and supervisory levels to help sustain a culture that reinforces a healthy workplace

A major factor affecting the well-being of an organization is the type of communication that occurs between colleagues and between employees and their supervisors. Managers and supervisors who can effectively listen to and communicate with their employees and who consider how changes and decisions will affect their employees' well-being help to sustain a healthy culture.

Tips:

Create a mentoring program that matches leaders with mentors in the organization who excel in areas that the leader wants to improve

Develop a leadership development program that incorporates healthy workplace principles (example: reducing high demand/low control and high effort/low reward situations in the workplace; increasing flexibility and decision-latitude; ways that management can reinforce a healthy workplace, etc.)

Encourage managers and supervisors to support work-life balance (example: flexibility in schedules, taking lunch breaks, etc.)

8. Share leadership, responsibility and accountability for healthy workplace issues throughout the organization

To be successful, workplace health should be aligned with the organization's vision and business strategy so that it can contribute to organizational needs such as enhancing retention and attendance while positively impacting the bottom line. This means moving away from a program approach to workplace health to a more shared responsibility for wellness throughout the organization.

Tips:

Create an organization-wide healthy workplace committee to develop a healthy workplace plan that incorporates ideas and issues from throughout the organization.

Include membership from different key functional areas and levels of the organization. For instance, your team may include senior management, union representatives, employees from functional and administrative areas such as finance and human resources, and front-line staff.

Present the need for this type of working committee to your senior management team to get approval for its permanence. While committee membership may change over time, the committee structure provides an on-going forum for communication among various areas and levels within the organization about workplace health issues.

Although one division of the organization, such as human resources, may be ultimately accountable for organizational health, all areas of the organization can take accountability for providing input into this strategy, and can take the leadership and responsibility to implement the plan in their own area within the organization.

9. Ensure that employee health issues are considered in the management decision-making process.

When the value of employee well-being becomes ingrained in the culture of an organization, the impact of management decisions on the well-being (physical, mental and emotional) of employees will start to be more commonplace. If employee well-being is referenced in a company's mission or vision statement, and is included in company policies, it indicates, 'this is how we do things in this organization' and becomes more 'top of mind' when decisions are being made.

Tips:

Start by reflecting the importance of employee wellness within your mission and/or vision statements (see Strategy #1)

Develop an "umbrella" organizational health policy that provides direction for management decision-making (see Strategy #2)

Consider including "commitment to health and wellness of employees" in the job description and employment offer of new leaders entering the organization.

Jack Kimball is a freelance writer.