Effectiveness of workplace health promotion and primary prevention interventions: a review

Abstract

Background Workplace health promotion and primary prevention interventions are highly prevalent. However, their effectiveness remains mostly unclear. Aim This article compiles and summarizes the results of current reviews concerning the effectiveness of health promotion and primary prevention interventions in the workplace. Subjects and methods Studies were selected from four electronic databases on the basis of the following criteria:(1) Meta-analysis or systematic reviews, (2) published in international peer-reviewed journals (3) between 1 January 2004 and 30 June 2008 (4) in English or German (5) that examined the effectiveness of workplace health promotion and primary prevention interventions. Results Seventeen reviews met the inclusion criteria and were subsequently categorized into the following areas of intervention: stress, physical activity and nutrition, organizational development, smoking, and ergonomics and back pain. Singular interventions showed limited effectiveness. Workplace interventions aimed at helping individuals reported substantially greater effects than workplace interventions aimed at the workforce as a whole; here, methodological influences play an important role. Conclusions The greatest results are achievable through comprehensive multimodal (or systemic) programs including relational and behavioral elements. Future research is needed in the conception of methodologically sound and setting-appropriate study designs.

Developing Sustainable Workplaces with Leadership: Feedback about Organizational Working Conditions to Support Leaders in Health-Promoting Behavior

“…Leaders can build policies, practices and procedures to create a safe psychosocial working climate to protect employee psychological health and safety [19]. These procedures can include managing and changing working conditions to obtain a health-promoting workplace, which is also a much more sustainable approach to change employee health in the current view of WHP [14,20] and in the view of psychosocial risk assessment [21]. In psychosocial risk assessment, a safe and health-promoting workplace can be obtained by reducing working conditions that have a potential harmful effect on the employees [22].…”

Strategies of active dissemination of workplace health promotion

“…A growing body of literature reviews provides evidence for the efficacy of WHP (De Greef and Van den Broek, 2008;Egan et al, 2007;Engbers et al, 2005;Goldgruber and Ahrens, 2010;Saksvik et al, 2002;Shain and Kramer, 2004). However, if any kind of WHP intervention is ultimately to have a public health impact, it must be disseminated among and adopted by companies (Glasgow et al, 1999).…”

Implementing Health-Promoting Leadership in Municipal Organizations: Managers’ Experiences with a Leadership Program

“…As such, they focus on changing the social, structural, and political aspects of the organization, and evaluation of such organizational health interventions has proven to be a complex task . While individual-directed interventions addressing various health behaviors produce relatively consistent positive health outcomes (e.g., Goldgruber and Ahrens, 2010;Sockoll et al, 2009), evidence for organizational-level interventions on employee health is weaker and inconsistent (Montano et al, 2014;Sockoll et al, 2009). This is the case although organizational health interventions are assumed to produce more sustainable results because they focus on upstream factors, such as work organization design and leadership practices, which are of importance for employee health (LaMontagne et al, 2007).…”