Our strategic goals are
• Safe and meaningful work• Supportive organizations• Effective occupational health services• Flourishing worker
Our values are
• Effectiveness, reliability, and partnership
Our promise to our clients
• To be the best partner in creating solutions for well-being at work; regionally, nationally, and internationally
Bases of our operations
• Research-based knowledge• Co-operative development• Proven effectiveness• Comprehensive, creative solutions• Active impact• Swift reaction• Future orientation
The goal of WHP:
Workplace health promotion supports the well-being and functional capacity of employees, and advances workplace functions and productivity.
Work ability is the balance between a person's resources and work demands
A person's resources consist of health, competence, values, attitudes and motivation
Work ability is related to work and working conditions, the work community and leadership practices, and the environment outside of work
With the frame of work ability it is possible to take into account aspects that we consider to be important, like the resources of the individual and the factors related to both work and the environment outside work
The ability to work is the basis of well-being for all of us. Nevertheless, our work ability will deteriorate unless we take care of it. Many factors affect work ability, and we can influence several of them through our own activity. We can influence both our own lifestyle and our own work environment.
Work ability can be defined as how able a person is to invest his or her physical or mental resources into work with respect to work demands. Work ability is then built on the balance between a person's resources and work demands. A person's resources consist of health and functional capacity, education and competence, and values, attitude and motivation. Work ability can be seen as the result of the interaction of the worker and his or her work on the one hand, but on the other hand, it covers the work environment and community, as well as the actual contents, demands, and organization of work. The concept of work ability has changed and developed during the last decade in a more holistic and versatile direction. The definition of work ability is currently paired with integrated models in which work ability is created and promoted by many factors.
One hears quite often that inspiring people, both employees and employers, to promote occupational safety and health issues is difficult. We have the means and the tools and the knowledge, but we do not know how to motivate people to make changes.
Often, when we talk about these problems, we especially mention groups that are labeled as hard-to-reach. This kind of groups are e.g. immigrants, small and micro-entrepreneurs and companies, professional drivers and the logistics sector and young workers.
At FIOH, we have developed new approaches to promoting OSH issues with e.g. these mentioned groups. Our starting point has been that what works well with these specially challenging groups, will work with other professional groups as well. Our approach basically consists of the three main points visible here. Let’s take a short look at each of them and at the reasons why this approach may have worked well.
In this era of social media and increasing demands to participate, it seems almost boring to concentrate on work itself. However, this is the basis of all inspiration and motivation – all actions must be based on the demands of the work in question.
Let me illustrate this with a
CASE-example of analysing the OSH requirements and basing workplace health promotion on needs:
A few years ago we had a project called Alert behind the Wheel – with Healthy Nutrition. It was a three year project, funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health through the European Social Fund's Operational Programme in mainland Finland. The Alert behind the Wheel project also implemented the Finnish Government's Policy Programme for Health Promotion. Our main goal was to promote professional drivers' healthy dietary habits during working hours as a device for promoting their work vigour, alertness, and work ability.
Let’s take a short look at the background of the Alert behind the Wheel project and the health and work ability requirements of professional driving, we know from earlier research that professional drivers' work demands good health and alertness, and that their lifestyle habits are closely related to safety issues at work and on the road. The prevalence of central obesity and metabolic syndrome are high among professional drivers – this basically means that they have an increased risk of getting type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and sleep apnea. Some of these diseases can, in the worst case, lead to premature work disability.
In addition, shift work is common in the transport sector – fatigue is often felt when working during nights and unhealthy eating is also more harmful for shift workers. There is an increased risk of weight gain and cardiovascular diseases.
Traffic safety is always important and even more so for professional drivers whose workplace is in traffic. Too heavy meals during the early hours increase fatigue and it is possible that there is a connection between unhealthy lifestyles and road traffic accidents caused by sleep deprivation and fatigue.
We also know that healthy dietary habits, sufficient sleep and regular exercise promote daily work ability and health. These habits are important in good weight management and for the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
So clearly there is a work-related background to the importance of healthy eating for professional drivers.
The problem was that general health promotion and information did not reach the professional drivers. And even if it did, the drivers did not care about the information. So what to do? What did the professional drivers eat and where and why?
As well as providing the professional drivers and their employers and occupational health services with culturally relevant information about healthy eating habits,
we also needed to educate and to find ways to improve the service-station sector’s selection of food.
We needed to create opportunities for making healthier food choices and to develop new eating habits at the same time.
And we needed to include various actors and make this a joint task: transport companies, food-service producers, occupational health services, professional drivers themselves, and the general public, through our media campaign.
Thus the OSH relationship with work and work ability that creates the needs base for OSH actions looked immediately more diverse. So the OSH needs in this case did not only mean the needs of the individual driver, or the employer, but also the needs that have to do with the stakeholders of the profession (often occupational health, but in this case the service-stations proved to be crucial since they were the professional drivers’ staff canteens). So to summarize what it means to take into account the relationship to work and work ability, we need to take into account the health, safety and work ability requirements of the profession in the context that people actually do their work in. We could have continued to promote drivers’ eating habits and concentrated on the employer/employee –actors and would have had very little success if the environment (the service stations) had not been included in the process as well.
So the relationship to work and to work ability is important and it is a good idea to spend some time in checking that part out. Now, let’s move on.
Why did this work well, a few more theoretical thoughts:
Taking relationship to work and work ability seriously means that we have a tailored approach. We don’t expect the same general program or guide to fit everybody’s needs. We involve our target groups in making the programs and guides together with us. We’ll take a few examples of this later on.
When we tailor, develop and implement OSH together, our target groups get a better grasp of the message. In this way, people can positively identify themselves with our OSH message (samaistua).
Different occupations have different important OSH issues to take into account. What works well for professional drivers may not be the right way to approach e.g. doctors. So, relationship with work and work ability, should be considered carefully before implementing OSH messages.
We may seldom pay attention to why we do certain things at our workplaces in the way that we do. Often, things could be done in other ways too, but we have been enculturated (enkulturaatio) into our workplace and our profession. Culturally related ways of acting have become a part of our professional identities.
Cultural context can be challenging to overcome for OSH specialists; this could be especially so with e.g. young workers, less educated workers, migrant workers or again with the professional drivers. Or the cultural context itself can enable safety and health at work and make sustaining it easier, e.g. doctors, police, firemen -> for them workplace safety is a part of their professional pride. It is easier to find the common language.
How then, can we take into account the various cultural contexts in OSH campaigns? I will present two video examples of taking cultural context into account. This first one has to do with involving a famous and, among our target group, a respected person into our OSH campaign and using humor as a tool.
In another context, this approach could go terribly wrong, so I recommend determining:
Who does our target group look up to? Who do they respect and listen to? What kind of humor works well or would using humor make the message unreliable for our target group? Would a famous character respected by the target group be available for our campaign; would he or she make a good role model for OSH issues? Being a good role model doesn’t mean that the character is perfect in the OSH sense– quite the opposite, when promoting the professional drivers healthy dietary habits, we used a character that is more known for his bad habits. In this way, we made it possible to identify with the character. Let’s take a look.
VIDEO HERE
So taking the cultural context into account basically means that you have to know who you are talking to. Know your target group and make your message culturally understandable. If your target groups, are e.g. immigrants, try and use characters similar to them and language that is as plain as possible.
Then a totally different kind of target group – young immigrant ICT workers. The ”Me and my colleagues” video describes how the work community plays an important role in an employee’s ability to cope at work and in their work ability. Workmates may be the only friends a new immigrant has since moving to Finland. Thus the work community is also important for settling down in and liking a new country. Here we used a context familiar to ICT workers, English as a working language, a positive and modern atmosphere. Again, we took into account the cultural context of this target group.
Why taking cultural context into account works well?
Cultural context provides us with information about socially acceptable means and ways of acting. These factors form the basis for emotional togetherness at workplaces.
OSH information and guidance should always make use of this information. Attaching relevant OSH information to the profession and its specialties helps make the guidance seem relevant also from the target group’s point of view. This approach respects the self-governance of our target groups. Using examples of people similar to the workers themselves in our OSH materials, help us to overcome professional barriers and to make OSH more effective.
Employees tend to best know the issues related to their own work. Thus it is worthwhile involving them in planning the company’s safety, health and well-being at work processes.
Co-creation and increasing participation in WHP has been tested in several of FIOH’s projects and is starting to gain a foothold in companies as well.
Co-creation can be done at workplaces. Shortly, co-creative health promotion means managing well-being and OSH at work in a comprehensive way. When a common voice can be heard and people have the opportunity to influence their work, the well-being of personnel increases. Often, the personnel’s influencing opportunities are unclear in many ways. Meeting discussions and corridor conversations are not implemented into concrete actions. In large organizations and big companies it is essential that the management – the leaders and bosses – participate and commit to co-creation. Without management ’s commitment, co-creation is not likely to succeed. Co-creative methods are especially suitable for OSH matters having to do with health behavior, since they are more likely to be common to everyone in the company – despite different job descriptions.
How can a company get started if co-creation is something completely new for them?
A straightforward and easy joint development model for health promotion via co-creation was developed in our Young Driver Can! project. The Hitting Home model is a tool that provides information on employees’ thoughts and on issues that may require development.
Another method of co-creation, which especially suits specialist organizations like FIOH, is crowdsourcing. Todays’ people, especially the young, want to participate almost by default. It would be unwise to leave this intellectual property without use. At FIOH we have crowdsourced the making of guides and even books with the help of the social media. To put it simply, we have asked the target groups what would they like to know and what information they believe is relevant and important for their peers to know and what information they have lacked themselves and in what way or in what format would they like to receive the guidance, what would work best. In this way, we have e.g. received insight into micro-entrepreneurs lifeworld ’s and OSH that we wouldn’t have had otherwise; i.e. if we had proceeded in making the guides based on survey results and specialist knowledge alone, which has been the traditional way.
So I encourage co-creation: participate and let others participate too, crowdsource…test boldly!
To summarize:
Learning is context-bound. This also goes for learning to promote one ’s own health, safety and work ability.
Paying attention to the success of OSH and to the positive outcomes, will further motivate people. Motivation helps to transform knowledge into actions at workplaces.
It is also economically sustainable to take advantage of the work environment, lifeworld (Habermas’ ”Lebenswelt”) and the cultural contexts of our target groups.
Active participation increases the likelihood of behavior changes (Pignone et al. 2003, 75 - 92). I encourage using and taking advantage of culturally relevant humor and the distinctive features of professional identities. This promotes togetherness at workplaces and in relation to OSH matters.
If this all seems far out, you can start by making small tests and at least:
Avoid risk, prohibition and control related OSH messages. These messages widen the gap – the distance between OSH professionals and our workforce and employers. We don’t want to build any more cultural barriers; instead we should tear them apart. Let us throw ourselves into an era of inspiring OSH messages. We have many possibilities, today I have named a few, and there are many more, e.g. social marketing. The world and the message is ours, just waiting to be delivered in an inspiring way.
Investing in well-being at work is productive
Thank you!