Workplace Health Promotion in German Social Firms-Offers, Needs and Challenges from the Perspectives of Employees, Supervisors and Experts.

Ann-Christin Kordsmeyer,Julia Christine Lengen,Ilona Efimov,Volker Harth,Stefanie Mache

doi:10.3390/ijerph19020959

Abstract

On the general labor market, social firms provide 30–50% of people with different types of disabilities the opportunity to gain employment. However, the topic of workplace health promotion (WHP), needs for improvement and accompanied challenges are neglected in the current research and were the focus of the present study. Therefore, data triangulation was used between July and December 2020 by combining three focus groups with employees (n = 14 employees) with 16 interviews with supervisors from several social firms in Northern Germany (e.g., from catering, cleaning or bicycle repair sectors). 17 semi-structured telephone interviews with experts in the field of WHP or social firms were added. All approaches were audio-taped, transcribed and anonymized. To analyze the data, Mayring’s qualitative content analysis was used. The results indicated that several offers for WHP, including sport, nutrition and relaxation, were offered, as well as those on smoking cessation, cooperation with external organizations or training and education offers. Needs for improvement were stated referring to additional sport offers, support for implementing a healthy diet, offers for relaxation, financial incentives or collaborations with external organizations. A low take-up of offers; a lack of resources, structures or management support; compatibility of offers with work time and organization; challenges with available trainings or the consideration of individual needs and capacities were highlighted as challenges. Overall, there is a need for further interventional and longitudinal research on WHP in social firms.

Highlights

Promoting and maintaining the health of employees is important for companies, referring to legal requirements and individual well-being, and to increase employee motivation and performance as well as employer attractiveness [1]
Beforehand, no workplace health promotion (WHP) interventions could be identified in the setting of social firms within the current state of research [12]
Different country- and sector-specific factors should be examined. These results regarding WHP offers were the first within this research field and provided insights into how WHP has already been implemented in social firms

Summary

Introduction

Promoting and maintaining the health of employees is important for companies, referring to legal requirements and individual well-being, and to increase employee motivation and performance as well as employer attractiveness [1]. Occupational groups facing high levels of interpersonal interaction were significantly affected by increased sickness absences due to mental disorders (such as health and social services or education [2]). To ensure a sustainable and holistic promotion of the employee health, occupational health management can be defined as the planning, implementation, evaluation and control of health-promoting measures within a company. Such measures include the pillars of occupational health and safety, occupational integration management and workplace health promotion (WHP) [3]. Associated economic effects underscore the need to focus on this topic, in terms of direct costs of illness (mental disorders account for 44.4 billion euros in 2015 [9]), and in terms

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion