A campaign is under way to encourage a new approach to health promotion activities in the workplace. The initiative, which was launched in Dublin Castle last week by the Minister of State for Health, Dr Tom Moffatt, is based on the need to include an organisational dimension into workplace health promotion, rather than simply targeting individuals.
It is based on the belief that workplace health promotion leads to economic benefits by contributing to increased productivity, competitiveness, commitment and enhanced staff morale.
Mr Moffatt said that the National Consultative Committee on Health Promotion identified the need for a "strategic approach to tackling many of the lifestyle factors which contribute to premature illness and death". It also recognised the need for "new initiatives in a range of settings conducive to health promotion". He noted: "The majority of people spend at least a third of their adult lives in the workplace. Their health, and how the workplace impinges on their health, has vital social and economic consequences."
The workplace provided an important environment to respond to the need for healthier lifestyles but, in this regard, "Ireland is lagging behind many other countries," he said.
The size of an enterprise appears to have an impact on the extent of health promotion and in this regard small and medium-sized enterprises appear to be "characterised by particularly low levels of health promotion activity", he said.
Mr Horst Kloppenburg, principal administrator in the European Commission's DG-V section, said that more than 65 per cent of the employed population in the European Union - and even more in the Republic - are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises. "Despite the fact that they are the major employer in the European Union, the vast majority is still not yet in the position to cope appropriately with health issues in the workplace and in the work environment," he said. In traditional economic thinking, "labour was a factor of production similar to land and capital - a cost which has to be reduced in any case. Today common thinking has changed so that people nowadays represent a key resource," he said.
In her keynote address, Prof Cecily Kelleher of the Centre for Health Promotion Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway, said that as a setting "the workplace has intrinsic advantages [for health promotion] in that workers are essentially healthier than the population in general". This leads to the ideal situation where occupational health services "can be predominantly proactive and prevention-driven".
There are potential advantages for workers and employers in maintaining the good health of the workforce "including improved staff morale, reduced absence from work and improved productivity", she said.
Early health promotion strategies in the US in the 1970s and 1980s were often "based around lifestyle issues and individuals in orientation but more recent strategies have incorporated organisational change and a review of the total working environment", she said. Her own three-year research project in the West of Ireland "in three settings, industry, academic and hospital was based around the issue of lifestyle and cancer". It found that organisational change strategies were "more effective and showed greatest benefits for blue-collar employees, particularly women".
Mr Pat Barry, director of corporate affairs at Guinness Ireland, said the company was a "firm believer in the practice of preventative medicine". He noted with regret that Prof Kelleher's research had shown that the health promotion initiatives in the various worksites used in her West of Ireland study "were discontinued not long after the project finished, even though health promotion teams had been established and the results were there to be seen".
He pointed to the need for a high level of commitment by senior management to health promotion at work and the need for senior managers to see interventions as providing organisational benefits rather than mere "disposable extras".
Dr Dan Murphy, director of occupational medical services at the Health and Safety Authority, said there was increasingly a need for occupational health and safety services "but these must be a little less traditional". They will need to operate in the "participative environment demanded by workplace health promotion" and "occupational hygiene, occupational ergonomics, occupational psychology, occupational nursing and occupational medicine will all need to contribute".
