What's New?
To read about Health Workplace Outcomes & measuring the success of your healthy workplace strategy, click here
Translation services provided by:
2005 Sponsors
Platinum:
Gold:
Canada's Healthy Workplace Week is overseen by
the Canadian Healthy Workplace Council
and managed by:
Founding Partner:
Getting Started
WELCOME to the Canada's Healthy Workplace Week website! If you're new to the site, this page is here to help you find your way around.
This website was developed to assist you in:
- Getting started on a workplace health strategy for your organization (see Long Term Strategies)
- Developing ideas and activities for celebrating Canada's Healthy Workplace Week (CHWW) in your organization (see 2005 Activities)
- Begin your year-round resource for healthy workplace information (see Resource Well)
If you and/or your organization are just learning about workplace health, there are many ideas on this site to help you get going, and links to other sites that may also be useful for you.
- Check out Canada's Healthy Workplace Criteria
- Build a Foundation for a Healthy Workplace Through Leadership Strategies
- Develop a Healthy Workplace Plan for Your Organization
- Nurture Your Greatest Asset - Your People!
- Measure Outcomes
- Attend the Annual Health, Work & Wellness Conference
- Celebrate Canada's Healthy Workplace Week in your Organization
- Explore the Benefits of Creating and Sustaining a Healthy Workplace
1. Check out Canada's Healthy Workplace Criteria
The National Quality Institute, with assistance from the Canadian Healthy Workplace Council and Health Canada, developed the Canada's Healthy Workplace Criteria that provides some excellent guidelines for creating an organizational health plan.
Need a little more help? The Framework for the Development of a Healthy Workplace course goes into these guidelines in much more detail. Check out www.nqi.ca/ for an upcoming course.
2. Build a Foundation for a Healthy Workplace Through Leadership Strategies
Building a foundation for a healthy workplace starts with leadership strategies such as developing healthy workplace policies and improving interpersonal skills of managers and supervisors in your workplace. See CHWW 2002 archives for more on building this foundation.
3. Develop a Healthy Workplace Week Plan for your Organization
Developing a healthy workplace plan involves assessing workplace and employee needs, and developing an organizational strategy based on those needs. See CHWW 2003 archives for more on healthy workplace planning.
4. Nurture Your Organization's Greatest Asset - Your People!
This includes aligning your HR strategy with your healthy workplace strategy, developing a way of measuring employee satisfaction and morale, and creating a communications plan for your healthy workplace strategy. See CHWW 2004 archives for more on people engagement.
5. Measure Outcomes
To learn more about identifying, planning and measuring the outcomes that may result from developing a healthier workplace, see the CHWW 2005 Long Term Strategies.
6. Attend the Annual Health, Work & Wellness Conference
Canada's premier conference on organizational health will be held this year on October 20-22nd in Montreal, Quebec. The theme for 2005 is THE NEXT GENERATION and will focus on what it takes to drive workplace health to make it a mainstream part of the strategic vision of most companies.
The Health, Work & Wellness Conference will expose you to the best practices, strategies, and research available to move your workplace beyond the status quo to the next generation of organizational health and create a successful and healthy organization. Visit www.healthworkandwellness.com for program and registration details.
7. Celebrate Canada's Healthy Workplace Week in your Organization.
There are numerous ideas of activities to implement during Canada's Healthy Workplace Week (CHWW) in the CHWW 2005 Activities section and in the How To Participate sections of previous years located in the Archives. The activities range from awareness building exercises that can be placed in your company's newsletter or intranet [E.g. quizzes and articles] to action oriented events [E.g. health fairs and challenges]. The idea is to involve employees at all levels [i.e. Increasing CEO/Executive Team Visibility, Building Capacity in your Work Teams].
Download the CHWW 2005 poster to post throughout your organization and demonstrate your involvement and support of healthy workplaces. Consider purchasing CHWW 2005 items to give away as gifts and/or prizes during Canada's Healthy Workplace Week.
8. Explore the Benefits of Creating and Sustaining a Healthy Workplace and Build a Business Case to garner Internal Support from your Senior Executive Team.
There is more than 20 years of research to support the fact that a healthy organization is good for employees, the business, and the bottom line. When employees feel empowered and valued at their place of work, they are more productive, have higher loyalty, have lower stress levels and are healthier - physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially and mentally. For the organization, this translates into higher productivity and retention, and reduced costs associated with absenteeism, recruitment and healthcare, providing a competitive edge.
Are you wondering where to start in gathering the background information to build a business case for your own organization?
There is an abundance of available research and case studies to help you on your journey:
- The CHWW Resource Well is a good place to begin your research. Here you'll find links to articles, and other websites that contain documentation to help you make the case for developing a comprehensive workplace health strategy.
- In addition to getting 'hard' statistics [i.e. numbers], also look for examples of what other organizations have been doing, and the improvements and results they are getting. The Canadian Labour and Business Centre conducted 12 case studies on innovative workplace health initiatives that is worth looking into.
- For more case studies, the NQI website contains valuable information on the Canadian Awards for Excellence Healthy Workplace Award winners.
- "A Four Step Guide to Building the Business Case for a Healthy Workplace" is another excellent and easy-to-follow resource, and can be found at www.nqi.ca
Congratulations on getting started with a workplace health strategy!
Please contact us with any comments or feedback you may have!