Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace

Details

• Personal Author:
  Barnes-Farrell J ; Cherniack, Martin G. ; Punnett, Laura
• Description:
  CPH-NEW III used participatory action research (PAR) methods to develop the institutional infrastructure necessary to support sustainable TWH programs with continuous improvement at participating workplaces. An updated instrument for assessment of an organization's readiness to implement a participatory TWH program identified organizational obstacles to implementing a participatory program and provided an accompanying analysis with specific guidance on how to overcome these obstacles. This addressed a longstanding challenge to organizational interventions, which is to find ways to "unfreeze" an organization so that it is more amenable to initiating change. One example is to identify the need for training at the management level regarding the benefits of shared decision-making with employees when employee health and wellbeing issues or concerns need to be addressed. The ability to both assess and increase organizational readiness for participatory TWH programs is one example of how CPH-NEW tools are being used to impact an organization's infrastructure. These assessments were conducted in both major research projects, SHIFT and HITEC. In the SHIFT study, assessment of organizational readiness for participatory TWH programs led to customized reports back to each study site about desirable infrastructure changes to enhance the likely success of the HWPP. Quality and sufficiency of communication, both vertically and horizontally within each organization, emerged as a key issue in two immediate intervention sites. We offered specific proposals to improve communication, representing an initial intervention even before the Design Teams (DTs) began to meet. All-Employee Surveys were conducted in parallel; initial analyses focused on employee burnout and mental health and their risk factors, in deference to concerns voiced by DT members at the two immediate intervention sites. In the HITEC study, some of the items in the new instrument for assessing an organization's readiness to implement a participatory TWH program were adapted as part of a priority analysis of health and wellness concerns. This priority analysis involved ranking health issues by their priority as well as their perceived difficulty to address. While the main goal was to standardize the focus of design team efforts across facilities, sharing the rankings with upper management was found to increase support for the intervention proposals from employee design teams that came later, thus helping overcome internal obstacles to organizational change. Another way that CPH-NEW research has impacted organizations is through skill-based training to support employee involvement in the design of workplace interventions. Participatory committee structures are created in each CPH-NEW study site, both in SHIFT project and in HITEC project. Instituting committees at different levels of the organizational hierarchy, with defined roles and expectations for joint activities, is a central feature of the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program. These structures facilitate communication and joint planning of organizational interventions among all levels of the organization. In each of our host organizations, senior managers serve as program Steering Committee members, and they provide program oversight and delegate authority to a Design Team of line workers to develop intervention concepts that will be considered by management for implementation. In HITEC, the Steering Committees and Design Teams were formed de novo; in SHIFT study, the teams were formed from within the existing organizational committee structures. By defining roles for these teams, the program establishes an infrastructure to support critical aspects of participatory TWH processes: assessment, intervention planning, implementation, and evaluation. Thus, use of PAR by CPH-NEW has impacted our partner organizations in specific ways to so that facility-based and institution-wide participatory TWH programs are adequately supported and likely to be sustainable over the long term. New teams formed through the HWPP facilitate communication and collaboration between labor and management, along with cross-functional integration that allows for TWH intervention design and implementation. Training provides skills development for program facilitators (to help with organizational communication) for Design Team members (to help with root causes analysis, problem solving, and intervention designing with a business case) and for Steering Committee members (to increase organizational resources allocated to improving employee safety and well-being). These efforts are intended to promoting organizational learning in ways that will enable these participatory programs to develop and expand without relying on extensive support from the researchers in the future. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Health Promotion Mental Health Nervous System Occupational Health Safety Staff Development Stress, Psychological
• Keywords:
  Health Promotion Job Stress Mental Health Occupational Psychology Total Worker Health Training Work Organization
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Final Cooperative Agreement Report
• Place as Subject:
  Massachusetts ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OEP - Office of Extramural Programs
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-21
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20068297
• Citation:
  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, U19-OH-008857, 2022 Nov; :1-21
• Contact Point Address:
  Laura Punnett, Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 600 Suffolk Street, Suite 415, Lowell, MA 01854-3643
• Email:
  Laura_Punnett@uml.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2023
• NORA Priority Area:
  Healthcare and Social Assistance ; Public Safety ; Services
• Performing Organization:
  University of Massachusetts, Lowell
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20060701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20210831
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:e16c41c48a299c717ca877dcc97c4c43b875b853d274d529ed712455d7cf20c3c07fdfed70c45e12a016ab0399bcc3a756e7a400cb6e447b0c58091ee70396c5
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219208/cdc_219208_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.23 MB ]