HEALTHY WORK ENVIRONMENTS: THE ROLE

OF HEALTH PROGRAMMES IN WORKPLACES

José Romay*, Ricardo García-Mira *, J. Eulogio Real** Gemma Blanco*

*University of A Corunha**University of Santiago de Compostela

DEFINITON OF WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Working environments can be conceptualised as the set of factors affecting work activity and, in general, the life of workers. Their interest is centred around the influence that the latter have on other factors directly affecting working life, among which we can point out:

 

Health, hygiene and safety at work

Workers’ satisfaction

Several behaviours related to work performance

QUALITY OF WORKING LIFE

We could consider the quality of working life as “the degree in which work activity carried out by people is objectively and subjectively organised, both in its operative and relational aspects, in order to contribute to their further development as human beings” (Fernández & Giménez, 1988, p. 483)

WORK CONDITIONS influence on stress and fatigue, as several theories highlighted:

the homeostatic theory (Cannon, 1932), the occupational stress theory (Cooper & Marshall,

1976), the organisational stress theory (Khan et al. 1964), the person-environment adjustment theory

(Edwards, 1996) the stress management theory (Quick & Quick,

1984)

Both stress and fatigue play an important role as causes of many work-related accidents.

HEATLH- PROMOTION PROGRAMMES

Health-promotion programmes have been defined as “the combination of educational, organisational and environmental activities designed to encourage behaviour leading to good health and welfare of employees and their families” (Kizer et al.1992, p. 125) and were implemented in three functional levels according to O’Donnell (1986).

Level I: Its aim is to make individuals aware of the specific consequences of unhealthy habits. It includes informations, video sessions, posters, educative classes.

Level II: Its aim is to achieve long term effects through the adoption of new health habits. It includes the modification of lifestyles (e.g. exercises for the back; acquiring physical fitness).

Level III: Its aims are the creation of an environment that helps individuals sep their lifestyles and behaviours and facilitates the participation in healthy lifestyles, by offering equipment, space, dress rooms at work, gyms, healthy food, etc.

We present next some of these programmes stressing their essential points:

Live for life- developed by Johnson & Johnson and focused mainly on three aspects:

The improvement of physical fitness of workers, through the building of gyms.

The elimination of noxious habits through the implementation of and anti-tobacco policy.

The establishment of healthy eating habits through the introduction of healthy-food menus.

Stay Well. This programme, very similar to the former, was developed in Control Data, although it was expected that workers played a more active role.

The Working healthier at Brabantia programme, carried out in the Netherlands, is particularly interesting. Basically aims to:

  Increase the state of well-being and satisfaction at work, Increase the safety levels, Increase the healthy behaviour with the corresponding

reduction of risky behaviour, health problems and biomedical factors of risk and

Reduce absenteeism and the costs of sickness and accidents.

THE ADVANTAGES FOR EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS

For employees it will basically be translated into greater safety at work, less stress, more health and therefore more psycho-social well-being in a general framework of greater quality of life, as can be inferred from our interactive model.

For employers it will be translated basically into an increase in productivity, reduction in sickness leaves and, in general, an improvement on the working climate.

In summary, we can say that these programmes try to maintain and improve the health of employees and reduce the medical and economic costs of sickness leaves and disabilities.

We also consider that health programmes can make those firms offering them more attractive in these times of frequent temporary contracting and great labour mobility.

In any case, a change in the culture of firms making them aware that they have to intervene in the promotion of the health of their workers in all respects is, in our opinion, previous and indispensable in order to be able to implement these programmes.

EMPIRICAL STUDY

 

In order to realize in practice the state of health programmes in the work environments we had choose one big firm of petroleum in the North of Spain. The data were obtained by personal interview whit the staff of firm.

 The enterprise studied has a 550 permanent

workers staff plus 50 temporary workers and 250 contracted by a third party, with an average age of 45 years.

According to the security:

Information risks is given to all the workers through documents, chats, charts and also via e-mail.

There exists a prevention technician in charge of ergonomic tasks.

It is an enterprise conscious of the necessity of security and perhaps due to his own system, which forces it to reduce the accidents every year in order to achieve a very low accident rate.

To make it concrete, there are between two and three accidents per million of worked hours. A good cipher compared to the 10 accidents per million in the bank business.

The aim is to get consensus between the enterprise divisions to establish the risk minimization procedures

Focusing on the labour health:

The medical Service is composed by a doctor and one ATS (nurse). The service is open the 24 hours.

Annual medical revision is operated to all workers.

No exist a special health program but is in study the implementation of a Health program for all workplace of the firm in the Spain.

The enterprise gives information showing how to acquire healthy habits mainly by:

ChatsCampaign against tobacco with

restricted areas for smokers A healthy diet in the canteen

There exists a specific health programme for executives staff. In our case only for five people developed by an external medical services.

There are a small economic help for private medical family consultations.

There also exists an enterprise group in charge of promotioning sport and leisure activities, which are paid by the corporation.

Labour stress keeps the same levels as times goes by. High stress cases are treated by doctors under the name of depressions, not from a psychological view.

The level of interaction and communication between workers and groups keeps a good rate thanks to meetings, magazines, notice boards …

There are also formal ways which allow the solution of conflicts in the enterprise, being the Human Resources Department very important in this task.

According to a research about labour climate, this one is acceptable but improvable.

The level of absenteeism is very low and differences between categories are minimum.

From the analysis of the collected information, we can conclude that fields related to security are very well covered mainly owing to an effective fulfilment of the labour risk prevention law which is quite strict.

The features linked with labour health seem to be in a development process and they are boarded more from a medical view than from a psychological perspective.

CONCLUSIONS

This agrees with the environment in a high sense, where the corporation is situated, and with the general sensitivity of population towards health subjects.

To understand many of the topics named It is necessary to bear in mind that all workers are specialized because all of them have at least a professional formation studies.

On the other hand, the enterprise also has a carrier plan

The analysis of results can induce us to conclude that the enterprise of our study has a health programme of level 1 (O´Donell, 1986) because its objective is mainly to make a conscious of consequences of unhealthy habits.