Smart starts for big wins: Ideas for Total Worker Health® (TWH)

Want to prevent workplace injuries? Turns out improving employee health and well-being is a great strategy. A healthy and fit person is less likely to be injured and recovers more quickly so they can return to work sooner.

TWH approaches address the work environment, management systems, and workplace climate or culture, as well as demonstrate concern for a worker’s health, safety, and overall well-being.

In addition to traditional known safety risks, there are six other basic factors that impact safety: Fatigue, hydration, nutrition, physical activity, chronic stress, and substance use.

Here are some actions, based on those six factors, that you can take to nudge your organization toward TWH.

Healthy eating

• Create an employee/community garden onsite or partner with a local school.
• Provide feasible healthy options in vending machines and services.
• Provide a break area away from production areas where employees can safely store and heat food from home. If you have field workers, coolers are a great option.
• Subsidize healthy onsite food options so they are affordable for all.
• Offer healthy options such as vegetables and fruit at meetings and events.
• Invite a nutritionist to talk about healthy, balanced diets.

Healthy hydration

• Install a fast-fill water station.
• Increase hydrating drink choices (water, flavored/infused water, herbal tea) and limit caffeinated and sugary drinks in vending machines.
• Provide water in addition to sodas at meetings and employer-sponsored events.
• Provide high quality water bottles so employees can hydrate at their workstations.
• Use toolbox talks, fact sheets, and posters to reinforce healthy hydration and provide information about the health benefits of hydration strategies.

Healthy exercise

• Install bicycle stands/shelters.
• Designate a nearby walking path that is safe, well-lit, and well-maintained.
• Work on making your workplace more ergonomically friendly including sit-to-stand workstations and task rotation.
• Encourage walking meetings by having management model that behavior.
• Provide functional fitness screening and coaching for physically demanding jobs.
• Provide flexible work schedules to support movement throughout the day.
• Provide incentives for physical activity, including wearable technology and subsidized gym memberships.

Fatigue

• Improve lighting; optimize for night workers.
• Provide a safe place and allow 30 minutes or less for a brief nap on break.
• Assess background noise or music for volume and worker impact and adjust as needed.
• Identify work practices that contribute to fatigue and collaborate on controls.
• Rotate shifts forward not backward (days, evenings, nights).
• Make work-related travel part of the workday.
• Initiate flexible schedules or other opportunities for employees to have autonomy in their work.

Stress

• Establish a quiet room, walking path, or other areas for meeting and contemplation.
• Provide a safe work environment with well-controlled hazards and good lighting.
• Maintain a clean environment; remove clutter.
• Support work-life balance; offer flexible scheduling, hybrid and remote where feasible.
• Perform an organizational stress assessment.
• Support time away from work areas.
• Require supportive management training for managers and supervisors so that leadership can effectively model healthy behaviors.
• Encourage electronically disconnecting after hours.
• Provide security controls to prevent crime and violence.

Substance use

• Implement a nicotine-free campus policy in collaboration with safety to help assure that employees who choose to continue to smoke will have a safe place to do so.
• Promote a nicotine-free campus.
• Include vaping and smokeless tobacco in nicotine-free policy.
• Promote cessation (health benefits, pay for support and quit products for multiple quit attempts).
• Provide education (training, lunch and learns, newsletter).

Summary

Remember that your workers are your best source of information about what’s going on in your workplace and they will know if your chosen idea will work. Be sure to engage your workers in any of these ideas designed to create a healthier workplace.

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For more information about integrating health and safety, visit saif.com/twh.

Total Worker Health^® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Participation by SAIF does not imply endorsement by HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.