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EDITORIAL |
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| Year : 2022 | Volume
: 26
| Issue : 1 | Page : 1-2 |
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Secrets toward building a sustainable health and well-being culture
Ashish Vijay Jain
Associate Editor - Indian Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Editor - Occuclave e magazine, India
| Date of Web Publication | 7-Apr-2022 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Ashish Vijay Jain
Dr Ashish Vijay Jain , 2701,Golf Link Apartments, Plot 95,Sector 54,Gurgaon
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijoem.ijoem_101_22
How to cite this article:
Jain AV. Secrets toward building a sustainable health and well-being culture. Indian J Occup Environ Med 2022;26:1-2 |
Dear All,
Employee health is not only positively related to employee well-being and family happiness but also impacts organizations and society as well. Evidence suggests that health and well being interventions play an important role in maximizing productivity, presentism, reducing attrition, and enhancing employee value proposition and brand reputation for any organization.[1]
The WHO definition of a healthy workplace [Figure 1] is as follows:
“A healthy workplace is one in which workers and managers collaborate to use a continual improvement process to protect and promote the health, safety and well-being of workers and the sustainability of the workplace by considering the following, based on identified needs:
- Health and safety concerns in the physical work environment
- Health, safety and well-being concerns in the psychosocial work environment including organization of work and workplace culture
- Personal health resources in the workplace
- Ways of participating in the community to improve the health of workers, their families and other members of the communities.”[2]
| Developing the Right Strategy | |  |
The key secret to build a sustainable health and well-being culture is to align organizational health and well-being strategy to the WHO Workplace Model. The WHO Healthy Workplace Model is based on creating a culture of well-being focused on positive physical environment, psychosocial environment, enterprise community involvement, and building effective personal health resources.
| Solving the Culture Jigsaw | | |
The foundations of a solid culture are based on two key pillars – visionary leadership and healthy employee engagement. Research demonstrates that there are six key components to build a culture of health in the organization:
- Value-based leadership
- Inclusive and supportive environment
- Structured systems and policies
- Impactful marketing and communication
- Enterprise community involvement
- Governance and continual improvement.
| How Can Leaders Contribute? | | |
Health and well-being programs are now shifting from being compliance driven to becoming robust business cases for maximizing performance and productivity of any organization. Leaders promote health and well-being[3] culture in four simple ways:
- Advocacy and sponsorship
- Role modeling
- Giving permission
- Recognizing and celebrating healthy best practices.
| Bringing it All Together | | |
Organizational mission and purpose is the compass on which value-based leadership holds steadfast. This helps the organization to hold its ground and navigate during difficult times. Employee health and well-being organizational strategy[4] needs to bring all the components together – senior leadership sponsorship, shared responsibility and collaboration of employees, champions, managers, and health professionals, supportive work environment, program engagement, innovative communications, reward and recognition, monitoring and continual improvement. The glue which holds all this together is accountability and understanding of the fact that health is everyone's responsibility.
The success of a well-being program is not driven by the range of activities, but instead by visionary leadership, capability, and human behaviors that support it. This is because the key emphasis is now on human capital and avenues to maximize this. The best places to work across the world are the ones who have imbibed the above in every fabric of their organization consistently and sustainably so that it has become a way of life.
Let us all strive hard to create thriving, healthy, and resilient workforces and a better world for our children.
Regards,
| References | | |
| 1. | The Role Leadership Has In Company Culture (forbes.com)  |
| 2. | WHO Framework — Middlesex-London Health Unit. |
| 3. | 10 Wellbeing Practices to Guide Leaders (gallup.com). |
| 4. | Slide 1 (health.gov.il). |
[Figure 1]
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