Dataset Information

Health Links™ Assessment of Total Worker Health® Practices as Indicators of Organizational Behavior in Small Business.

ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study was to conduct a cross-sectional assessment of the adoption of Total Worker Health (TWH) policies and practices by business size and evaluate extent and alignment of their safety and health. METHODS:We conducted an analysis of 382 businesses that completed the Health Links Assessment. We measured organizational adoption of TWH across six benchmarks: organizational supports, workplace assessments, health policies and programs, safety, engagement, and evaluation. RESULTS:Benchmark scores were significantly associated with business size. Larger businesses were more likely to score higher across each benchmark. CONCLUSION:Small businesses are implementing TWH in a variety of ways and the level of implementation differs by business size. Practical interventions as well as dissemination and implementation research should take business size into account to ensure that TWH is both effective and sustainable in meeting the needs of employees.

SUBMITTER: Tenney L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6748381 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Health Links™ Assessment of Total Worker Health® Practices as Indicators of Organizational Behavior in Small Business.

Tenney Liliana L Fan Wenyi W Dally Miranda M Scott Joshua J Haan Michelle M Rivera Kaylee K Newman Madeline M Newman Lee S LS

Journal of occupational and environmental medicine 20190801 8

<h4>Objective</h4>The aim of this study was to conduct a cross-sectional assessment of the adoption of Total Worker Health (TWH) policies and practices by business size and evaluate extent and alignment of their safety and health.<h4>Methods</h4>We conducted an analysis of 382 businesses that completed the Health Links Assessment. We measured organizational adoption of TWH across six benchmarks: organizational supports, workplace assessments, health policies and programs, safety, engagement, and ...[more]

PMID: 31045750

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Project description:BackgroundLeadership commitment to worker safety and health is one of the most important factors when organizations develop and implement a Total Worker Health® approach. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of a Total Worker Health ("TWH") leadership development program that targeted owners and other senior-level leadership positions on changing organizational and worker outcomes from baseline to one-year later.MethodsThe Small + Safe + Well study included small businesses from a variety of industries in the state of Colorado, USA that were participating in Health Links™. We designed a randomized waitlisted control comparison design (RCT) to evaluate the added benefit of a TWH leadership development program. An employer assessment tool was used to assess TWH policies and programs, and an employee health and safety survey was used to assess safety leadership and health leadership practices, safety climate and health climate, safety behaviors and health behaviors, and well-being. We used a linear mixed model framework with random effects for business and employee to assess the impact of intervention on the outcomes of interest.ResultsThirty-six businesses (37% retention) and 250 employees (9% retention) met the RCT study inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. Businesses improved their TWH policies and programs score from baseline to one-year later, regardless of leadership intervention group assignment. Neither intervention group demonstrated improvements in employee-reported outcomes.ConclusionsThis study sought to address a gap in the literature regarding small business senior leadership development for TWH. Our study demonstrates many of the challenges of conducting studies focused on organizational change in workplaces, specifically in small businesses. When designing TWH intervention studies, researchers should consider how to best engage small business leaders in interventions and implementations early on, as well as methods that are well matched to measuring primary and secondary outcomes longitudinally. Future research is needed to test the feasibility and sustainability of TWH interventions in small business.Trial registrationThe trial was retrospectively registered with ClinicalTrials.gov ( ID U19OH011227 ).

Project description:BackgroundThe Total Worker Health® (TWH) approach is a best practice method to protect and promote worker safety, health, and well-being. Central to this approach is leadership support and health and safety climates that support day-to-day use of health and safety policies and programs. There is some research that supports these relationships, but there is limited research amongst small businesses. Furthermore, it remains to be shown what role TWH business strategies, as reflected by organizational policies and programs, play in this process. The purpose of this study is to characterize small businesses by their organizations' TWH approach and assess the relationship of these approaches to employee health and safety behaviors.MethodsWe utilized cross-sectional data from 97 businesses participating in the Small+Safe+Well study. We collected data using a business assessment tool, Healthy Workplace Assessment™, and an employee assessment tool, Employee Health and Safety Culture Survey. We used latent profile analysis at the business level to identify subgroups of businesses based on a set of characteristics from these assessments. Linear regression analysis at the employee level was used to determine profile association with employee safety and health behaviors.ResultsThere were two profiles characterized by the lowest (33% of all businesses) and highest (9%) levels of the indicators. There were also two profiles with higher scores on two of the different foci on either TWH business strategies (27%) or leadership and climate (31%). Employees working for a business with a profile that focused on leadership and climate, in addition to having a business strategy, reported the best safety and health behaviors.ConclusionsOur study demonstrates that employee engagement in TWH will be highest when businesses have a strategy for how they implement a TWH approach and when they demonstrate leadership commitment to these strategies and foster positive safety and health climates. Our results offer suggestions on how to use TWH assessments to develop interventions for small businesses. More research is needed to understand whether small businesses can improve upon their profile overtime, whether these changes depend on contextual factors, and whether TWH interventions can help them improve their profile.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Home care workers are a high-risk group for injury and illness. Their unique work structure presents challenges to delivering a program to enhance their health and safety. No randomized controlled trials have assessed the impact of a Total Worker Health™ program designed for their needs. METHODS/DESIGN:The COMPASS (COMmunity of Practice And Safety Support) study is a cluster randomized trial being implemented among Oregon's unionized home care workers. Partnering with the Oregon Home Care Commission allowed recruiting 10 pairs of home care worker groups with 8 participants per group (n = 160) for balanced randomization of groups to intervention and control conditions. Physiologic and survey evaluation of all participants will be at enrollment, 6 months and 12 months. Primary outcomes are to increase health promoting (for example, healthy nutrition and regular physical activity) and health protecting (that is, safety) behaviors. In addition to assessing outcomes adjusted for the hierarchical design, mediation analyses will be used to deconstruct and confirm the program's theoretical underpinnings and intervention processes. Intervention groups will participate in a series of monthly 2-hour meetings designed as ritualized, scripted peer-led sessions to increase knowledge, practice skills and build support for healthy actions. Self-monitoring and individual and team level goals are included to augment change. Because generalizability, reach and achieving dissemination are priorities, following initial wave findings, a second wave of COMPASS groups will be recruited and enrolled with tailoring of the program to align with existing Home Care Commission educational offerings. Outcomes, process and mediation of those tailored groups will be compared with the original wave's findings. DISCUSSION:The COMPASS trial will assess a novel program to enhance the safety and health of a vulnerable, rapidly expanding group of isolated caregivers, whose critical work allows independent living of frail seniors and the disabled. TRIAL REGISTRATION:ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02113371, first registered 11 March 2014.

Project description:BackgroundThe use of SharePoint® collaboration software for content management has become a critical part of today's drug discovery process. SharePoint 2010 software has laid a foundation which enables researchers to collaborate and search on various contents. The amount of data generated during a transition of a single compound from preclinical discovery to commercialization can easily range in terabytes, thus there is a greater demand of a chemically aware search algorithm that supplements SharePoint which enables researchers to query for information in a more intuitive and effective way. Thus by supplementing SharePoint with Chemically Aware™ features provides a great value to the pharmaceutical and biotech companies and makes drug discovery more efficient. Using several tools we have integrated SharePoint with chemical, compound, and reaction databases, thereby improving the traditional search engine capability and enhancing the user experience.ResultsThis paper describes the implementation of a Chemically Aware™ system to supplement SharePoint. A Chemically Aware SharePoint (CASP) allows users to tag documents by drawing a structure and associating it with the related content. It also allows the user to search SharePoint software content and internal/external databases by carrying out substructure, similarity, SMILES, and IUPAC name searches. Building on traditional search, CASP takes SharePoint one step further by providing a intuitive GUI to the researchers to base their search on their knowledge of chemistry than textual search. CASP also provides a way to integrate with other systems, for example a researcher can perform a sub-structure search on pdf documents with embedded molecular entities.ConclusionA Chemically Aware™ system supplementing SharePoint is a step towards making drug discovery process more efficient and also helps researchers to search for information in a more intuitive way. It also helps the researchers to find information which was once difficult to find by allowing one to tag documents with molecular entities and integrating with image recognition software to find information from pdf documents.

Dataset Information

Health Links™ Assessment of Total Worker Health® Practices as Indicators of Organizational Behavior in Small Business.

Publications

Health Links™ Assessment of Total Worker Health® Practices as Indicators of Organizational Behavior in Small Business.

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