In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in how organizational-level occupational health interventions aimed at improving psychosocial working conditions and employee health and well-being may be planned, implemented and evaluated. It has been claimed that such interventions have the best chance of achieving a significant impact if they follow an intervention process that is structured and also includes the participation of employees. This paper provides an overview of prominent European methods that describe systematic approaches to improving employee health and well-being through the alteration of the way in which work is designed, organized and managed. The methods identified are the Risk Management approach and the Management Standards from Great Britain, the German Health Circles approach, Work Positive from Ireland and Prevenlab from Spain. Comparative analyses reveal that these methods all consist of a five-phase process and that they share a number of core elements within these phases. However, overall the five methods have not been thoroughly validated. To examine the validity of the core elements, we review them in the light of current research in order to support their appropriateness in conducting organizationallevel occupational health interventions. Finally, we discuss where we still need more research to determine the working ingredients of organizational-level occupational health interventions.
The powerful positive results of implementing teamwork are not always achieved. It has been suggested that attempts to implement theories regarding teamwork do not always lead to those theories being put into practice, and as a result positive outcomes are not always found. The participation of employees in the development and implementation of an intervention may help to ensure that changes take place. In this longitudinal study (N = 583) of teamwork implementation in Denmark we examined the links between pre-intervention working conditions and well-being, levels of participation in planning and implementation, employees’ reports of changes in procedures, and intervention outcomes. Pre-intervention levels of autonomy and job satisfaction predicted the degree of employee participation in the planning and implementation of the intervention. Pre-intervention well-being and social support were linked directly to the degree to which employees reported changes in existing work practices concerning teamwork. In addition, participation and changes in work procedures were significantly associated with post-intervention autonomy, social support and well-being. The results indicate that employee participation in intervention processes is crucial in what appears to be an important association with perceived changes in procedures and, therefore, in intervention outcomes.
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