Workplace Health and Well-Being: Advancing SIOP's Roles and Practitioner Opportunities

Robert Bloom, Laura Freeman, Valentina Bruk-Lee, Jerilyn Hayward, and Donna Roland

Workplace Health and Well-Being: Advancing SIOP’s Roles and Practitioner Opportunities

Robert Bloom, Performance Management Associates-HR

Laura Freeman, Win With HR

Valentina Bruk-Lee, Florida International University

Jerilyn Hayward, ServiceMaster

Donna Roland, SHL Talent Measurement Division of CEB

The Professional Practice Committee (PPC), in recent years, has been working to establish and build relationships with organizations in the workplace/employee health and well-being field in order to promote SIOP’s involvement in research and practice efforts, and to identify opportunities for future collaboration to advance practice in this area. Within the past several months the PPC has focused its goals to also provide practitioners with resources and tools to further educate them on research, trends, and best practices, as well as build communities of interest internally and externally to SIOP. Our goal with this column is to provide a brief background on the importance of workplace health and well-being, describe some of the external organizations and resources currently available to practitioners, and outline more details about the PPC’s plans and how practitioners can contribute.

The Importance of Workplace and Employee Health and Well-Being

As was described in Bloom, Ballard, and Royne (2013), there are several research trends, facts, and statistics that establish the importance of health and well-being issues for both employee and organizational outcomes. For example:

• 70% of working Americans cited work as a significant source of stress (American Psychological Association, 2012a)
• 41% of employees reported that they typically feel tense or stressed during the workday (American Psychological Association, 2012b) 
• Low salaries, lack of opportunities for growth or advancement, heavy workloads, lengthy hours, and unclear job expectations have all been cited as contributors to employee stress (American Psychological Association, 2012b)
• Considerable research has focused on the effects that social stressors in the work environment have on employee well-being (Spector & Bruk-Lee, 2007).

Creating a healthy workplace in organizations not only has a positive impact on employees but also positively affects the bottom line. A growing body of evidence outlines the relationship between employee and organizational health, wellness, and safety, and key organizational outcomes such as job performance, attendance, absenteeism, turnover, healthcare expenditures, productivity, and costs (American Psychological Association,  2015; Cooper & Bevan, 2014; Goetzel et al., 1998; Rosch, 2001). Given these important outcomes, and because employees spend a good deal of their lives at work and their job satisfaction substantially impacts their overall life satisfaction (Harter, Schmidt, & Keyes, 2003), there are many reasons for considering the business case for implementing psychologically healthy workplace initiatives. 

It should not be surprising then that employers that understand the link between organizational performance and employee well-being have focused on creating wellness-driven programs and policies. WorldatWork indicates that almost half of organizations that responded to a survey have an employee well-being strategy in place and that 74% plan to offer more well-being initiatives (WorldatWork, 2015). As highlighted in Bloom et al. (2013), many programs/interventions are patterned around the five psychologically healthy workplace practices identified by The American Psychological Association (APA): employee involvement, work–life balance, employee growth and development, health and safety, and employee recognition (cf., Grawitch, Gottschalk, & Munz, 2006). Example programs include (a) increasing employee involvement and empowerment such as self-managed work teams; (b) facilitating work–life balance such as flexible work arrangements and assistance with child care and elder care; and (c) implementing health and safety programs such as safety and security training and weight loss and smoking cessation programs.

Initiatives in the Health and Well-Being Arena in the U.S.

Recent years have seen a rise in efforts across a variety of professional disciplines and organizations to ensure that work environments are positive and healthy. As such, there are a variety of resources already available to SIOP practitioners who wish to learn more about this growing and important field. Below is a summary of some of these various organizations and resources:

• The Society for Occupational Health Psychology (SOHP) (http://www.sohp-online.org) promotes research, encourages application of research, and improves education in the area of occupational health psychology (SOHP, 2012). SOHP, along with APA, hosts a biennial Work, Stress, and Health Conference and produces a newsletter, and its website contains research-oriented resources.Further strengthening partnerships between SOHP and SIOP is a key goal moving forward.
• The Society for Human Resource Management Foundation has published a set of effective practice guidelines and strategies for promoting employee health and well-being (Chenoweth, 2011), and provides other complimentary resources (http://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/pages/healthwellbeingepg.aspx; http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/benefits/articles/pages/wellness-resource-page.aspxs).
• Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces at Berkeley (HealthyWorkplaces) (healthyworkplaces.berkeley.edu): Within recent years, Cristina Banksand Shelly Zedeckcreated a research center at Berkeley to aggregate and integrate a broad spectrum of research findings across disciplines to generate a holistic picture of the healthy workplaces based on science. In addition to a repository of scientific articles spanning literature in public health, occupational health, nutrition, computer science, business, psychology, environmental design, engineering, medicine, industrial hygiene, architecture, human factors, and health psychology, the center initiates interdisciplinary research to fill in knowledge gaps and to develop a model of healthy workplaces that focuses specifically on physical and psychological states as the driver of overall health and well-being. The center’s mission is to reinvent the workplace by capitalizing on all known science to enhance our understanding of how employees can not only avoid harmful factors but also be exposed to environments and engage in ways that promote their health and well-being. Factors considered include the built environment, work design, job demands and expectations, organizational policy, compensation and benefits, interior design, social groups, leadership and management, and HR programs and practices. I-O psychology is central to the integration of all these factors because I-Os understand work and well-functioning organizations. HealthyWorkplaces is establishing national registries of experts across disciplines to enable interdisciplinary teams to form geographically across the U.S. and work together to initiate new research and to holistically apply new forms of workplaces based on the research findings. 
•  APA has multiple resources aimed at addressing employee and workplace health and wellness. For example, APA created a Center of Excellence for Workplace Health in the 1990s aimed at helping promote the application of psychology to workplace issues. They created the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (PHWP; see www.phwa.org) as “a public education initiative designed to engage the organizational community, raise public awareness about the value psychology brings to a broad range of workplace issues, and promote programs and policies that enhance both employee well-being and organizational performance” (Bloom et al., 2013). The program houses APA’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards, which have been awarded to more than 500 organizations for their efforts to create a positive work environment. SIOP and its members have contributed to and continue to work to strengthen the collaborative relationship with the PHWP, including two authors of the current article, Robert Bloom and Laura Freeman, who are pioneering major involvement of I-Os in APA in the state of Tennessee. APA also publishes the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, which practitioners who subscribe to the EBSCO Research Access Initiative or who have research access on their own can use to stay up to date on the latest research in this field.

• NIOSH is a government agency that supports research activities relating to total worker health. The Total Worker Health initiative supports research activities and best practices relating to the promotion of efforts that advance employee well-being through the prevention of risk factors and health hazards in the workplace.
• NIOSH and the APA also funded occupational health psychology training programs, and I-O psychologists have worked with APA and NIOSH to help shape curriculum training (Fox & Spector, 2002).
• The Work, Family, & Health Network (WFHN): WFHN is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is an interdisciplinary team of researchers working to advance the field of workplace psychosocial interventions to improve employee health and benefit employers. Researchers are doing longitudinal research to identify how work–family conflict impacts employees and how changes in the work environment can impact work–family conflict. 
• There are now health-based companies consulting to organizations (e.g., Sentis, Health Ways, Stay Well). A broader awareness of all of the concurrent research efforts and implementations would benefit from including the work of these organizations as well. 
• In addition, positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship activities are helping to provide additional insights and avenues for pursuing research and practice into employee health and well-being. The Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan (http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu), aresearch center devoted to influencing management practices through work relating to positive leadership, meaning and purpose, ethics and virtues, and relationships and culture in organizations, is one example of efforts in this area.

The above list is but a small sample of the resources, outlets, and tools available to practitioners to grow their understanding of this exciting field. Now is an excellent time to increase a general awareness so that we can all work together to build synergies and best serve organizations and the workforce. 

What Does This Mean for SIOP?

In an effort to recognize the importance of a healthy workplace on organizational functioning and employee well-being and to create opportunities for interdisciplinary practice and research, SIOP’s Professional Practice Committee (PPC) plans to spearhead efforts to bring SIOP members and these groups together to create a community of interest as a forum for organizing the efforts. As a first step, the PPC will begin to create a registry on MySIOP for practitioners and scientists. Not only will this provide SIOP members with access to resources for partnerships, but it can also serve as a tool to link with other groups in other disciplines. Watch for an email from SIOP when the national registry is up and running and ready for I-Os to join. Also, if you are a researcher or have a passion for workplace/employee health and well-being, consider this a call to action: Start compiling research you have been a part of/successful interventions you have worked on that you’d like to share with your peers. The second goal of the PPC is to create a repository to share best practices, research, resources, and general information more broadly to encourage partnerships that may have not previously existed and to equip practitioners with the information they may need to help influence sound, evidence-based practice in this arena. This repository may include resources and information from not only SIOP members (e.g., white papers; presentations) but also links to external resources, organizations, and information that may be helpful to health and well-being practitioners. You can begin immediately to help out with this effort by contacting the PPC with any ideas, tools, or resources you believe would be helpful for your fellow practitioners. Please get ready to help increase the awareness throughout SIOP of all the great efforts in the field! We want to build SIOP’s brand as experts in the area of workplace health and well-being.

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association. (2012a). Stress in America: Our health at risk. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2011/final-2011.pdf

American Psychological Association. (2012b). APA survey finds feeling valued at work linked to well-being and performance. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/

stress-exec-summary.pdf

American Psychological Association. (2015). 2015 work and well-being survey. Retrieved from http://www.apaexcellence.org/assets/general/2015-work-and-wellbeing-survey-results.pdf

Bloom, R., Ballard, D.W., & Royne, M. B. (2013). The Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program: I-O’s role and involvement opportunities. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 50(3), 95–100. Retrieved from http://www.siop.org/tip/Jan13/16_kantrowitz.aspx

Chenoweth, D. (2011). Promoting employee well-being: Wellness strategies to improve health, performance, and the bottom line. SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series: SHRM Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/documents/6-11%20promoting%20well%20being%20epg-%20final.pdf

Cooper, C., & Bevan, S. (2014). Business benefits of a healthy workplace. In A. Day, E. K. Kelloway, & J. J. Hurrell (Eds.), Workplace well-being: How to build psychologically healthy workplaces.(pp. 27–49). London, UK: Wiley.

Fox, H. R., & Spector, P. E. (2002). Occupational health psychology: I-O psychologists meet with interdisciplinary colleagues to discuss this emerging field. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 39(4), 139–142.

Goetzel, R. Z., Anderson, D. R., Whitmer, R. W., Ozminkowski, R. J., Dunn, R. L., Wasserman, J., & The Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) Research Committee. (1998). The relationship between modifiable health risks and health care expenditures: An analysis of the multi-employer HERO health risk and cost database. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 40(10), 843–854.

Grawitch, M. J., Gottschalk, M., & Munz, D. C. (2006). The path to a healthy workplace: A critical review linking healthy workplace practices, employee well-being, and organizational improvements. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 58(3), 129–147.

Harter, R. W., Schmidt, F. L. & Keyes, C. L. M. (2003). Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup studies. In L. M. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.),Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 205–224). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Rosch, P. J. (Ed.). (2001, March). The quandary of job stress compensation. Health and Stress, 3, 1–4.

Sauter, S., Lim, S., & Murphy, L. (1996), Organizational health: A new paradigm for occupational stress research at NIOSH. Japanese Journal of Occupational Mental Health, 4, 248–254.

Society for Occupational Health Psychology. (2012). About SOHP. Retrieved from http://www.sohp-online.org/aboutus.htm

Spector, P.E., & Bruk-Lee, V. (2007). Conflict, health, and well-being. In C. K. W. De Dreu & M. J. Gelfand (Eds.), The psychology of conflict and conflict management in organizations.SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

WorldatWork (2015). 96% of organizations support employee well-being initiatives.[Newsline]. Retrieved from http://www.worldatwork.org/adimLink?id=78509