Workplace Health Management (WHM) There are four key components of workplace health management:

• Occupational Health and Safety
• Health promotion in the workplace
• Social and lifestyle determinants of health
• Environmental Health Management

In the past, politics used to be driven solely by compliance with the law. In the new approach to workplace health management, policy development is driven by both legislative requirements and health goals voluntarily set by the workplace community within each industry. To be effective, Occupational Health Management must be based on accumulated knowledge, experience and practice in three disciplines: occupational health, workplace health promotion and environmental health. It is important to view WHM as a process not only for continuous improvement and health gain within the company, but also as a framework for multi-agency engagement in the community. It offers a platform for cooperation between local authorities and business leaders in community development through the improvement of public and environmental health.

The Healthy Workplace Environment: A Cornerstone of the Community Action Plan.

The Luxembourg Declaration of the European Union Network for Workplace Health Promotion defined WHP as the combined effort of employers, employees and society to improve the health and well-being of people at work. .

This can be achieved through a combination of:

• Improve work organization and work environment.
• Promote the active participation of employees in health activities
• Encouraging personal development

Workplace health promotion is considered in the Luxembourg Declaration of the EU network as a modern corporate strategy that aims to prevent ill health at work and improve the potential for health promotion and wellness in the workforce. Documented benefits for workplace programs include decreased absenteeism, reduced cardiovascular risk, reduced health care claims, decreased turnover, decreased musculoskeletal injuries, increased productivity, increased organizational effectiveness and potential return on investment.

However, many of these improvements require the sustained engagement of employees, employers and society in the activities necessary to make a difference. This is achieved by empowering employees, allowing them to make decisions about their own health. Occupational Health Advisors (OHAs) are well positioned to conduct a needs assessment of health promotion initiatives with the working populations they serve, to prioritize these initiatives alongside other occupational health and safety initiatives. that may be underway, and to coordinate activities at the enterprise level. to ensure that planned initiatives are carried out. In the past, occupational health services have been involved in assessing fitness for work and assessing levels of disability for insurance purposes for many years.

The concept of maintaining work capacity in the healthy working population has been developed by some innovative occupational health services. In some cases, these efforts have been developed in response to the growing challenge caused by an aging workforce and the rising cost of social security. OHAs have often been at the forefront of these developments.

The focus of all occupational health services needs to be further developed to include efforts to maintain work capacity and prevent preventable non-occupational workplace conditions through workplace interventions. This will require some occupational health services to be more proactively involved in promoting health in the workplace, without reducing the focus on prevention of accidents and occupational diseases. OHAs, with their close contact with employees, sometimes for many years, are in a good position to plan, deliver, and evaluate health promotion and workability interventions in the workplace.

Occupational health promotion has grown in importance over the last decade as employers and employees recognize the respective benefits. Workers spend about half of their day without sleep at work and this provides an ideal opportunity for employees to share and receive various health messages and for employers to create healthy work environments. The scope of health promotion depends on the needs of each group.

Some of the most common health promotion activities are activities to reduce smoking, healthy nutrition programs or physical exercise, prevention and reduction of drug and alcohol abuse.

However, health promotion can also be directed towards other social, cultural and environmental determinants of health, if people within the company consider these factors to be important for improving their health, well-being and quality of life. In this case, factors such as improved work organization, motivation, reduction of stress and burnout, introduction of flexible working hours, personal development plans and career enhancement can also help contribute to the general health and well-being of the work community.

The healthy community environment In addition to occupational health and workplace health promotion, there is also another important aspect to workplace health management. It is related to the impact that each company can have on the environment that surrounds it, and through the pollutants or products or services that it provides to others, its impact on distant environments. Remember to what extent the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 affected entire neighboring countries.

Although the impact on the environmental health of companies is controlled by legislation different from that applied to Occupational Health and Safety, there is a strong relationship between safeguarding the work environment, improving the organization and work culture within the company, and its approach to environmental health. management.

Many leading companies already combine occupational health and safety with environmental health management to optimally use available human resources within the company and avoid duplication of effort. Occupational health nurses can contribute to environmental health management, particularly in those companies that do not employ environmental health specialists.

Going up. Key steps in developing new workplace health policies