Addressing Organisationally Induced Stress in a Police Jurisdiction: An Australian Case Study

Abstract

Over 3,500 employees in a police jurisdiction have participated in a health promotion initiative designed to encourage staff to take responsibility for their health. This project was part of a range of initiatives to address workplace stress and involved physical and medical testing and advice. This paper presents the results of interviews with 83 participants about the impact of the programme on their health behaviours and the extent to which they feel it has helped them manage workplace stress better. Although health promotion in the workplace is often criticised as a common response by organisations seeking to reduce stress for their workforce by placing the responsibility for that back on to the individual, this study demonstrates that there can be several positive outcomes. Not least of these is a reported increase in morale due to the perception that the organisation acknowledged that stress was generated by the workplace and was acting to provide support. The vast majority of those interviewed also reported changed health behaviours. The factor which reduced the participation rate (38 per cent) in the opinion of those interviewed was, however, a lack of trust on the part of workers about the objectives of the programme. The study reported here contains information useful to those both planning workplace health promotion initiatives and those organisations seeking to reduce workplace stress.