Evaluation of a small business Total Worker Health leadership program.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Schwatka, Natalie V.
• Description:
  Introduction. Leadership is a critical component of how a business develops and implements Total Worker Health (TWH) policies, programs, and practices. Business leaders are positioned to develop and communicate their vision for TWH and allocate resources. Ultimately, they are responsible for ensuring that business practices align with their vision. This is important, because several meta-analyses demonstrate that leadership is associated with several health, safety, and well-being outcomes. However, workplace health and safety leadership intervention research is in its infancy and few intervention studies exist. This presentation will describe a small business TWH leadership development and evaluation study and discuss preliminary results. In the context of small business, our research shows that senior leaders play a pivotal role in influencing TWH policies, programs, and practices, but they lack key skills to be successful TWH leaders. It is important to develop TWH leadership training in the small business context because smaller firms have fewer TWH policies and programs, and their employees are at risk for poor health and safety outcomes. The aim of our study is to evaluate the following hypotheses: Hypothesis1: Leaders improve their TWH leadership practices from before to after the TWH leadership program. Hypothesis2: Leaders meet their TWH leadership goals after participating in the TWH leadership program. Hypothesis3: H1 & H2 relationships are moderated by leaders' readiness for change before the TWH leadership program such that leaders higher in readiness for change will observe greater improvements than leaders who are lower on readiness for change. Methods. We developed the TWH leadership program as part of the Small+Safe+Well (SSWell). We are actively recruiting small businesses (<500 employees) from a variety of industries to participate. This presentation will describe the TWH leadership program including training components, evaluation methods, and preliminary results. Results from the larger SSWell study will not be discussed. Program components. One owner/senior manager representing a unique small business was invited to participate in the TWH leadership program. They were able to bring one other individual from their organization (e.g., safety/wellness coordinator) if they wished. The 10-hour program was spread out over four months and included in-person and virtual components. First, leaders reviewed and reflected on TWH business- and employee-level TWH assessment results. Second, leaders participated in a 6-hour in-person training session with a small (approx.15-20) cohort of other small business leaders where they set at least three goals to work on over the next three months. Finally, for three months, leaders participated in an online, social goal-setting platform and three virtual, one-on-one coaching sessions. Measures. We are evaluating the program using pre-post survey data, website use data from the goal setting platform, and post-program qualitative interviews. Before the in-person training, leaders completed a survey containing questions about their TWH leadership practices (developed by researchers) and change readiness- stage, need, efficacy, and personal valence of change and training instrumentality and motivation (developed by other researchers). After they finished participating in the goal-setting platform and coaching sessions, they were asked about their TWH leadership practices in a survey. We also collected goal success information from the online goal-setting platform. Finally, after completing the program, we interviewed each leader 1) to understand their reactions to the program and 2) to learn about the ways in which they have changed their business's TWH practices and culture as well as their own health. Analysis. We will use linear mixed modeling with a random intercept for leader to compare self-reported TWH leadership practice responses from before to after the program (H1). We will evaluate change readiness as a moderator of this change by including it in the model as a covariate and as an interaction with time (H3). Goal attainment (H2) will be evaluated by calculating the percent of successful goals completed within the goal-setting platform. All qualitative interviews will be content analyzed by two researchers to determine themes in leaders' responses to each of our questions. Results. As of January 2018, we completed two cohorts of leaders and will complete two more cohorts by Summer 2019. In total, we expect to be able to share results from 47 leaders from 30 organizations. The organizations represent service (50%), public administration (17%), and retail (10%) industries and 20% of them are from rural communities. The businesses have on average 45 employees (Range=4-430). Results will be available to present by the time of the conference. Conclusions/practical implications. Our study contributes to the TWH literature in several ways. First, it describes the first TWH leadership program evaluated in the empirical literature. Second, it focuses on underserved workplaces- small business. Third, we will be able to put our findings into context by evaluating leaders' readiness for change. In future research we plan to evaluate how the TWH leadership program impacts business and employee outcomes such as changes to TWH adoption and implementation, employee morale, retention, and health/safety. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Health Promotion Occupational Health Safety Small Business
• Keywords:
  TWH; Total Worker Health; Work organization; Supervisory personnel; Small businesses; Health promotion; Intervention effectiveness
• Publisher:
  American Psychological Association
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  Colorado ; OSHA Region 8
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  87-88
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20065778
• Citation:
  Work, Stress and Health 2019, November 6-9, 2019, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2019 Nov; :87-88
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• NORA Priority Area:
  Manufacturing ; Services
• Performing Organization:
  University of Colorado Denver, Aurora
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20160901
• Source Full Name:
  Work, Stress and Health 2019, November 6-9, 2019, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• End Date:
  20260831
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:8455a1be3d28de26104536b4286cd804cf1973517941db7b365aa1c4a6a6252bfac9dafac19eb11827e85b4dfd3d38bf4f60593c385795a8d5429ddfd2f3ccf1
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/249548/cdc_249548_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 113.73 KB ]