Workplace health promotion

Rather than present here a rationale which justifies the inclusion of workplace health promotion in all worksites, it is more appropriate and useful to develop your own personal rationale and philosophy based on your own reading, experiences and associated attitudes and beliefs. This statement is also more relevant if you can relate it to a specific worksite in which you are working (either past, present or fumre). 

The benefits are not alw s evident in the short term, so it is important to set realistic time frames for the assessment of aity potential prograrmne effects. Some of the intangible benefits described in the workplace health promotion hterature have been summarized as ... 

Blaze-Temple, D. (1992). The Evaluation of Alcohol and other Drug Interventions in the Workplace. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2(2) 22-7. 

Health and safety representatives are employees who are appointed, nominated, or volunteer to assist in the promotion of safety to ensure a safer workplace. Health and safety representatives contribute greatly to the health and safety of the woik-place and assist in the identification and elimination of hazards. 

Workplace-related psychological safety demonstrates itself when employees feel unable to put themselves on the line, ask questions, seek feedback, report problems, or propose a new idea without fearing negative consequences to themselves, their jobs, or their career. A psychologically safe and healthy workplace actively promotes emotional well-being among anployees while taking aU reasonable steps to minimize threats to employee mental health. 

NIOSH chief Dr. John Howard advocates health promotion and weiiness in workplaces, and tackling modern Ills such as Job stress. 

In June 2011, NIOSH introduced Total Worker Health M (see http //www.cdc.gov/niosh/twh/). According to NIOSH, Total Worker Health M is a comprehensive organizational strategy that integrates traditional occupational safety and health protection efforts with health promotion and other workplace activities to prevent illness and injury, regardless of cause, so that all workers have opportunities to achieve optimal levels of health and well-being. Will NIOSH s strategic shift impact your worksite Stay tuned for updates. 

Primary prevention is part of general health education and should thus emphasize general aims given in the Ottawa Charta, such as advocate, enable or mediate (World Health Organization 1986). Health promoting activities could use both the setting of vocational training schools and of the individual workplace. 

The response of senior company officers who are concerned to avoid personal liability is to set in place management systems which promote workplace health and safety and to audit these systems to ensure that they are working as well as possible. Directors and managers who have set up such systems can be reasonably sure that they have exercised due diligence and that they could not be held personally liable in the event that a worker was killed or injured or, worse, that some disaster resulted in more widespread death and injury. 

Promotion of workplace health and safety requires good communications between people. A person technical proficient in health and safety must communicate well to be effective. 

Authority and Resources. Responsible personnel must have adequate authority and resources to perform the desired tasks. Commitment of necessary resources for workplace health and safety must be documented and must address staffing space, equipment, training and promotions. Budget and capital expenditures for health and safety improvements must also be included. 

The International Chemical Safety Cards (ICSCs) provide essential health and safety information on chemicals to promote their safe use. They are intended for use at the shop floor level by workers, but also by other interested parties in factories, agriculture, constmction, and other workplaces and often form part of education and training activities. 

This coalition of businesses, business groups, and individuals promotes efforts to reduce drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace in order to protect the health and safety of workers as well as business productivity. It also supports drug-testing programs when done under proper guidelines to protect employees rights. 

The Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety Act. C-13. (1978) This act created CCOHS to promote health and safety in the workplace, establish and maintain safety standards, develop programs to reduce or eliminate occupational hazards, and collect statistics. 

The Labor Department agency employs three strategies to promote safety and health in American workplaces strong, fair, and effective enforcement outreach, education, and compliance assistance and cooperative and voluntary programs. 

The purpose of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability. The CDC provides limited information on occupational safety and health. For example, their web page has information about accident causes and prevention, back belts, cancer—occupational exposure, effects of workplace hazards on male reproductive health, latex allergies, needle stick, occupational injiuies, teen workers, and violence in the workplace (see website http //www.cdc.gov). The Center for Health Statistics is located within CDC and provides basic health statistics on the U.S. population. This information is used to identify potential occupational health risks by occupational health researchers (see website http / / WWW.cdc.gov/nchs). 

Workers must be protected against retaliation. As we have seen, this is an indispensable requirement of any safety program that deputizes workers to regulate their own workplaces. As discussed above, measures to promote truly egalitarian labor relations should not be viewed as auxiliary advances in occupational safety and health are inseparable from worker empowerment in general. 

Workplace Safety and Health Assessing Current Practices and Promoting Change in the Profession, Thomas D. Schneid... 

Today, numerous organizations are devoted in full or at least in part to the promotion of safety and health in the workplace (see Table 2-2). These lists are extensive now, but there was a time when these agencies and organizations didn t exist. We will discuss three important ones. 

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