reflecting essay for organization wellness

Culture, communication and making heathier workplace

Learning Objectives

Describe the characteristics of psychologically healthy workplaces

Understand communication as essential prerequisite to successful organisational change

Examine the role of culture and communication in making workplaces healthier

Recognise the importance of creating and sustaining an organisational culture that supports worker health and well-being

Psychologically healthy workplaces

Psychologically healthy workplaces share five important characteristics

 •Opportunities for employee involvement

•Promote employee health and safety

•Foster work-life balance

•Support employee growth and development

•Recognise employees for their achievements

Other models exist

–World Health Organisation (WHO) emphasises many of the same characteristics (physical & psychological)

–Total Worker Health framework (NIOSH,2012) – the employment relationship, the workplace, and the worker

–All have more similarities than differences

•Healthy workplaces come about as the result of adopting and implementing sets of policies and practices at the organisational level designed to influence behaviour change across all levels of the organisation

–Tailored to the particular needs of the organisation

Once effectively implemented and communicated, serve to shape the health-related behaviours

−Communication plays an integral role

Organisational Culture

•Health-related policies and practices

•Product of basic culture (shared values and assumptions)

Developed over time

Easier to sense than to describe

Shapes behaviour and expectation

Organisational culture-climate model

–Influenced by a variety of internal and external factors

–Culture influences organisational structure & policies

•Provides context for climate perceptions (surface manifestation of the deeper, underlying culture of the organisation)

Organisational culture-climate model   (adapted from Ostroff et al. 2003)

Cultural subdomains – operational or functional (most notably safety culture)

Positive safety culture

High importance to safety

Make needed investments for safety

Take appropriate actions to identify and control hazards

Closely monitor safety performance

Organisational Culture – focussing on the health domain

Starting Point

Assess the existing health-related structures and policies

Generate a "to-do" list for improvement

Narrow the focus to worker health

Once change priorities are identified, they need to be implemented with attention to the overall culture of the organisation and principles of effective organisational communication

Organisations already providing healthy workplaces generally have cultures that permit and support the associated healthy workplace policies and practices

§More complex for organisations seeking to become healthier

§Organisational change intervention = culture change

§Implementing and communicating it with attention to the existing culture

Communication

§Foundation upon which the key attributes of a healthy workplace must be developed to be effective

§Essential prerequisite for successful organisational change 

§Strategic communication planning should be a collaborative effort

§Planning should seek to understand how employees will extract meaning from planned communications

§How employees ascribe meaning to managerial actions such as changes in policies, procedures and informal communication

Communication – Sense Giving

The story or "scripts" that leadership uses to talk about forthcoming changes (Verbal Communication)

messages disseminated as formalized, top-down announcements

Channels include:

§ Employee newsletters

§Employee training

§Company websites

§Formal evaluations

§Informal group meetings  

§Policy changes

§Procedural redesign

Employees socially construct a framework of meaning that helps them to understand and make sense of organisational changes

A cognitive process influenced by formal channels

More affected by informal channels

–nonverbal managerial actions (behavioural) 

–Verbalisation v behaviour (do what they say they will do)

–Employees may develop the sense that the goal is of interest (health initiative) but lacks the priority of other strategic goals if action does not meet expectation 

•Organisational Identification whereby employees embrace the values espoused by the organization, relies on both the sense- giving and sense-making processes.

Workplace health promotion practitioners have placed increasing emphasis on the sense-giving aspect of engendering organisational identification

•leadership support of health promotion - alignment of business practices

•high levels of education among organisational leaders - link between health, well-  being, and job performance

•strong top-down communication  relaying health's importance

 Feedback is important for sense-making process

–immediate supervisors, co-workers, family, and friends are often the source of feedback

Reducing resistance to change    

–“people do not resist change, they resist being changed"

Uncovering resisters' concerns and fears can go a long way in understanding what employees value within their current organisational structure and in determining how change can be incorporated while still preserving these valued characteristics. 

Making Organisations Healthier

Two attributes inherent in virtually every healthy workplace model have important implications for organisations wanting to become healthier

–That the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

•Programs and actions interact – mutually reinforce

•Requires a systems analytic approach

The typical workplace is a dynamic system, within which people interact with tasks, tools, and each other in pursuit of some set of mission-related goals.

An integrative model – three phase change process for creating healthy workplaces (based on DeJoy & Southern, 1993)

Phase I

– enabling  actions at the organisational level that legitimise the change process and put structures and mechanisms in place that make change possible

–Focal Task - Organisational culture assessment to minimise two errors

(a) assuming that all people in the organisation have the same view of the organisation

(b) that the view you hold is also the view of others

–Put mechanisms and structures in place to make changes possible

–Create a steering group

Phase I

–Leadership support  for healthy workplace changes needs to be active and meaningful(Not only verbally support change, but they must also be willing and able to execute it)

–Communication priorities – Evaluate possible nonverbal messages sent by planned managerial actions to ensure they support the change

–Actions taken during Phase I serve two very important functions: they allow the organisation to assess and demonstrate its motivation and readiness for change; and they foster a sense of psychological safety. 

Phase II

Systematic analytic process

•Problem identification

•Decision making

–Identify the underlying problems or issues impeding progress

–Many organisations use health risk assessments (HRAs)

Phase II

Creation of a unified data system to identify priority problems in term of importance and changeability

–Builds stronger management commitment - fosters employee involvement

Formal organisation-wide communication plan should be developed that "stresses the positive aspects of change and informs people honestly about their opinions and opportunities" 

–Identifies who will create and who will receive change-related messages

Phase II Communication Priorities

–Actively communicate and solicit feedback from employees about change

–Use insight from research to understand characteristics of audiences

–Plan formal communication scripts and dissemination methods 

Phase III

– Implement and Evaluate

–Select or design the interventions that will be used

•Identified problems/needs coupled

•Multiple integrated interventions focused on creating a healthy workplace

Communication priorities – Disseminate sense-giving messages (using scripts and methods identified in Phase II) Provide situations that foster sense-making reactions among employees  

Phase III – Implement and Evaluate

Seven criteria:

–(1) they should focus on organisational-level solutions

–(2) employee participation should be a key feature

–(3) intervention methods should address all phases from planning to evaluation

–(4) interventions should be integrated within existing organisational practices and culture

–(5) communication and awareness-building efforts should be included

–(6) methods should take into account existing intervention activities

–(7) small- and medium-size organisations should be able to use the method

Summary

Described the characteristics of psychologically healthy workplaces

Outlined the importance of communication in allowing a positive organisational change experience

Examined the role of culture and communication in making workplaces healthier

Review of DeJoy and Southern’s integrative model for improving worker health and well-being