Longitudinal Study of Total Worker Health in Small Enterprises

Details

• Personal Author:
  Schwatka, Natalie V.
• Description:
  The intent of this career development award was to expand my knowledge and skills on how organizational-level factors affect safety and health outcomes in small businesses across a range of industry sectors, with particular emphasis in the design and evaluation of interventions that enhance Total Worker Health TM (TWH). During my career development/training activities, I took several courses in statistics, business, and health as well as received mentoring from a business professor on how to write case studies. I have already and plan to continue to use the knowledge and skills I gained in these educational efforts in my research as well as in my education responsibilities at my University. I also engaged in a diverse array of research activities that resulted in four broad findings. First, businesses vary in their practices to support employees' safety, health and well-being. The best employee engagement in workplace TWH efforts happen amongst businesses with strong TWH business strategies and organizational leadership. Second, when trying to assist businesses with changing their TWH business strategies and organizational leadership, my work uncovered the opportunities and challenges that businesses and their leaders experience. My work on the topic of mental health, specifically, demonstrates a particular need for leaders to understand how to focus on workforce mental health. Third, there is a significant opportunity for employers to adopt a shared leadership approach to TWH to combat the challenges that businesses have in implementing sustainable TWH solutions. My research uncovered the working conditions that might give rise to shared leadership for TWH in both the construction and healthcare industries. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic began early in this award period and presented an opportunity to understand employee perceptions of their organization's commitment to safety and health (i.e., organizational climate) over the course of the early months of the pandemic. I found that perceptions of health and safety climates remained stable across all timepoints. However, employee well-being scores declined between the pre-pandemic period and subsequent COVID-19 timepoints. These findings suggest that while small organizations continued to be viewed as supporting employees' health and safety over the course of the pandemic, well-being scores declined, indicating that other factors contributed to decreased wellbeing. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Communicable Diseases Mental Health Nervous System Occupational Health Safety Small Business
• Keywords:
  COVID-19 Longitudinal Study Mental Health Small Businesses Total Worker Health TWH Wellbeing Work Organization
• Series:
  Grant Final Reports
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Final Grant Report
• Place as Subject:
  Colorado ; OSHA Region 8
• 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:
  1-22
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20069409
• 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, K01-OH-011726, 2023 Sep; :1-22
• Email:
  natalie.schwatka@cuanschutz.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2023
• Performing Organization:
  University of Colorado, Denver
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20190701
• Source Full Name:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• End Date:
  20220630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ee3d3b313e668d935b381363d33ecbba904e2259104ddc0365bad50423656e5ad4fec11ba039b5ce2b101885db3215a613f89d6550421e5226418021c1818c50
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/219224/cdc_219224_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.20 MB ]