Implementing TWH
Want to take the next step towards a Total Worker Health® approach for your organization? NIOSH TWH Centers have developed several programs designed to take your organization's well-being efforts to the next level. The links below will lead you through the steps of implementing a TWH project, from assessing the readiness of your organization to engaging workers and management to designing, implementing, and evaluating your new TWH program. In addition, you'll find tools to assess worker well-being, to identify the root causes of safety and health concerns, and to effectively set and meet TWH goals.
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Featured Resources
Implementing an Integrated Approach is a program from the Center for Work, Health, & Well-being designed to weave health, safety, and well-being into the fabric of your organization. The guidelines on this page include an overview of the program, which focuses on inspiring key worksite stakeholders to move towards well-being, identifying key goals and objectives, and implementing policies and practices that contribute to worker well-being. Want to learn about the program in under a minute? Check out this video that explains how employers have benefited from this program and what it can offer your organization.
The Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (HWPP) is a program from the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW) designed to help employer organizations adopt and implement programs with a Total Worker Health® approach. The HWPP Toolkit was developed to engage employees in designing integrated solutions that address a wide range of work environment, work organization, safety, and employee health issues. Check out the program overview, the facilitator's manual (including detailed information for implementing the HWPP), and the Toolkit at a Glance (core program tools on one page).
The Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) is a program from the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center designed to increase supervisor and peer support and decrease job strain, which play a key role in safety compliance and improved physical and mental health. SHIP interventions were studied in a NIOSH-funded randomized controlled trial that included supervisory training, behavior tracking, team-based planning, and follow-up sessions. SHIP integrates a focus on both health protection and health promotion by addressing psycho-social factors that are shown to be related to safety, well-being, and organizational productivity. SHIP is aimed to increase employee support from supervisors, improve team communication, enhance team effectiveness, and reduce stress and work-family conflict. Check out the complete toolkit here.
Other Resources
Total Worker Health Essentials (7 min video). In this video from the Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest, employers share ways to better protect and promote workers safety, health, and well-being at work and beyond. The essential elements of planning, implementing, and evaluating Total Worker Health policies, programs, and practices are described.
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Getting Ready for Program Start-Up is a page from CPH-NEW that includes a short (5-minute) training video and a guide with detailed instructions designed to help you assess your organization's readiness, gather management support, and understand the program goals, tools and resources needed to implement the program. Want to know how it fits within the larger context of the program? Check out this PDF illustration of how the HWPP works.
Step One: Assess Organizational Readiness. Do you have the necessary resources, knowledge and competencies for program success? CPH-NEW offers two surveys to help you better understand the readiness and needs of your organization: Organizational Readiness Survey (7-item) for Total Worker Health®, a brief screening survey, and the Organizational Readiness Survey (24-item) for Total Worker Health® designed to provide a thorough evaluation of resources and competencies already in place at your organization. You can also request assistance from CPH-NEW in generating an aggregate report of these surveys.
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Gather Management Input and Support. Does management effectively communicate the importance of the health and safety initiative? Buy-in from senior leaders is crucial to success. With senior management behind the program, it will be easier to ensure that the committees have the support and resources they need to fulfill their roles. CPH-NEW also offers a training webinar on Making the Pitch to Senior Management, a PowerPoint presentation that reviews the goals of the HWPP, and other materials to share.
Form a Steering Committee. After gaining management support, CPH-NEW suggests that organizations form a Steering Committee that consists of senior and mid-level managers and other key personnel (including union leaders) who can marshal organizational resources for interventions.The Steering Committee oversees the program, works with the Design Team and selects interventions for implementation.
Design Team Start-Up from CPH-NEW describes how to form and train a Design Team, or a core group of line-level employees who serve as the engine of the participatory program. The team meets with a facilitator to consider workplace health and safety issues and crafts solutions appropriate to their work environments. The page includes detailed guides for three start-up sessions, including a guide to creating a design team and a facilitator's manual.
Tip Sheets to Encourage Employee Participation. The Center for Work, Health, & Well-being offers one-page tip sheets in English and Spanish dedicated to encouraging employee participation in an integrated approach to address conditions of work.
Other Resources
Total Worker Health Essentials: Starts with Management is a 3-minute video from the Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest that explains the key to success is management that model safe and healthy behaviors. Success is achieved when employees and managers jointly develop policies, programs, and practices
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Identify Health and Safety Priorities from CPH-NEW is a page dedicated to assessing the health and safety issues of your workforce. Before developing a focus for your new health and safety program, you will first need to know what issues are important to your workforce. Involve employees at all levels of the organization to ensure that all perspectives are represented. Resources on this page include an all-employee survey, a focus group guide, and links to other important tools that can help you take this next step towards worker well-being.
The Thriving from Work Questionnaire from Center for Work, Health, & Well-being provide a comprehensive measure of work-related well-being. What is "Thriving from Work"? Thriving from Work is the state of positive mental, physical, and social functioning in which workers' experiences of their working conditions enable them to thrive in their overall lives, contributing to their ability to achieve their full potential in their work, home, and community. These rigorously validated questionnaires have produced reproducible results with respondents from a wide range of sectors, occupations, educational, and economic backgrounds.
The Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ) is a NIOSH-developed survey that seeks to provide employers an integrated assessment of worker well-being across multiple spheres, including individuals’ quality of working life, circumstances outside of work, and physical and mental health status. Curious about other resources, including surveys and scorecards? Check out NIOSH's non-exhaustive list of planning, assessment, and evaluation resources.
The Healthy Work Survey for Employers is a free online tool developed by the Healthy Work Campaign that identifies work-related causes of common mental and physical health problems. After completion of the survey by participants, a free, confidential report of personal results can be emailed directly to each participant (if they choose) and an aggregate/group-level report can be generated for the organization.
Want to get a sense of how effective your current programs are as you assess employee needs? The HERO Health and Well-being Best Practices Scorecard is designed to help organizations learn about best practices for promoting workplace health and well-being, and to discover opportunities to improve and measure progress over time.
The Workplace Integrated Safety and Health (WISH) Assessment developed by the Center for Work, Health, & Well-being measures workplace policies, programs, and practices that focus on working conditions and organizational facilitators of worker safety, health, and well-being. The tool can be used by employers and researchers to assess the extent of implementation of an integrated approach.
Other Resources
Take the Pulse of Your Organization's Culture - Using Surveys to Measure your Workplace Health and Safety Program is a 40-minute webinar that teaches attendees to take the pulse of their organization’s culture using employee surveys. Dr. Natalie Schwatka from the Center for Health, Work & Environment covers what types of questions should be included in a well-designed survey, how to interpret survey results, and the benefits of using this kind of assessment.
Total Worker Health® Data Series: Needs & Interest Surveys is a 47-minute webinar on TWH data. This session from the Center for Health, Work & Environment discusses what information a business can collect, analyze, and trend regardless of organization size, healthcare funding model, or industry. The webinar focuses on how to develop interest surveys and how to work with the data once you have collected it.
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Generate Solutions Using the IDEAS Tool. The Intervention Design and Analysis Scorecard (IDEAS) tool is the seven-step process at the heart of the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (CPH-NEW). Through this tool, employees identify the root causes of a specific work-related safety and health concern and design appropriate interventions. CPH-NEW also offers a video overview of how to use the IDEAS Tool.
Setting Annual Objectives for Total Worker Health is a tool from the Center for Health, Work & Environment that asks organizations to put their objectives in the context of their core values and employee needs before developing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals.
Total Worker Health Essentials - Program Design is a 5-minute video from Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest that helps employers begin by building on what's already present. The video covers how to review existing policies and programs and assess the information that you have to identify needs and priorities that fit your business. It can be as simple as asking employees what they need to help facilitate program development and employee engagement.
Other Resources
Finding Your “Why” for Total Worker Health® is a 1-hour webinar developed for the HealthLinks program at the Center for Health, Work & Environment. The webinar covers why TWH is a core organizational value, how to set and measure S.M.A.R.T. goals for your health and safety programs, and strategies from leading employers that you can take and apply at your organization.
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Total Worker Health Essentials - Employee Engagement is a 3-minute video from the Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest where employers share tips on how to effectively communicate policies and programs to encourage participation in safety and health programs.
The Center for Health, Work & Environment offers two tools for developing communication plans that will support a successful TWH program:
- Developing a Communications Plan reviews basic principles of communication plans, including how to determine key messages, finding your audience, and locating venues for effective distribution.
- Single Overriding Communication Objective (SOCO) Worksheet is a tool to create a specific message for communication with employees and customers/clients. This approach applies to any public health-related communication.
Other Resources
Effective Communication for Motivating Teams - Total Worker Health® (TWH) communications plan is a 1-hour webinar from the Center for Health, Work & Environment that includes how to communication your organization's vision for health and safety in a way that inspires leaders and team members to engage and invest in it long-term. The webinar covers why effective communication is essential to reaching and engaging teams, how to design and implement a TWH communications plan, and shared strategies from other employers that you can take and apply.
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Evaluate Your Program from CPH-NEW outlines key program evaluation goals and approaches, including both process (quality of program interventions) and outcome (how well the program met long- and short-term goals) evaluation measures. Program evaluation is vital for assuring that the program is meeting expectations and getting results. Identifying problems early can help you make corrections and stay on track. Collecting evaluation data can show progress and help to justify future program investments. Available tools include a manager interview guide and a process evaluation rating sheet.
Total Worker Health Essentials - Evaluation is a 4-minute video from Healthier Workforce Center of the Midwest that features employers discussing how they evaluated their programs before, during and after implementation to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs.
The Workplace Health Evaluation Checklist from the Center for Health, Work & Environment lists key metrics that employers may wish to consider in evaluating integrated health and safety programs, including productivity, healthcare claims and costs, and employee satisfaction.
Other Resources
The Value of Evaluation is a 37-minute webinar from Center for Health, Work & Environment that shares effective evaluation strategies that employers can use to track and monitor the success of your programs and policies.