Monash Workplace Health Check
What is it?
The environment is described as anything external or outside of individuals. These things have an enormous impact on behaviours and contribute to either healthy or unhealthy choices. An audit can be conducted of the worksite that will identify areas that can be improved to promote physical activity and other healthy opportunities within the workforce.
A Workplace Health Check (WHC, sometimes called environmental audit or workplace profile) was created by Monash University, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine Jan 2009. It's a tool designed to give feedback on how healthy the environment is within your organization and provides practical recommendations from low to high resourcing needs. It's solution focused.
Why implement the Monash Workplace Health Check?
The WHC is a self-assessment tool for you to complete which will collect information on the organisation's demographics along with it's physical and policy environment to assess how supportive the workplace setting is of workers adopting healthy lifestyles.
For example; whether access to stairs is available to encourage physical activity, whether the local canteen or mobile food van offer healthy food and beverage choices, and whether programs such as tobacco cessations are offered would be examined as part of the check.
Experience from successful health promotion programs shows that strategies aimed at several levels are more successful and sustainable in the long-term. Therefore the options given are marked by the level where change takes place, at the individual, environmental/organizational or policy levels.
Implementing a Workplace Health Check
The questions of the WHC are split into categories depending on the type of Health Behaviour they are analyzing. Answers are weighted so that the more positive the response (ie, the healthier the worksite), the higher the score. Subtotals are tallied for each category and scores are reported in the form of a score range and colour coded based on the level of support each particular health behaviour has in the workplace.
A list of strategies that can be implemented at workplaces are provided as part of the Healthy Workplace Report for each health behaviour. The components have been split into low, medium and high resourcing needs. This will provide suggestions that could be quickly implemented at low costs or those implemented as resources become available for such initiatives.
The three levels indicate the relative amount of staff and financial resources that will be needed to implement the program. You are then able to, in consultation with the Workplace Health Committee, to incorporate the short, medium and long term strategies into your overall Corporate Health Plan.
Where do you start?
Allocate one to two members of the Workplace Health Committee to conduct the WHC. This could take 2 hours or 2 days depending on your access to and knowledge of your organisation and it's size (you may need to "dig up" health related policies or track down the "relevant" people to get the full facts).
- Complete the online WHC tool below
- Report is made available
- Report back to Workplace Health Committee
- Priorities identified by the group
- Reported to Management Team / Leadership Group
- Include proposed strategies into the Corporate Health Plan (Step 6)
- Work begins on implementing changes
Your Workplace Health Check
Work through the tool below (approximately 15 - 20 minutes) and a Workplace Health Report will be generated upon completion in a new window
The Monash Workplace Health Check has been made available in partnership by Monash University, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and AlphaOne® Workplace Health Promotion programs.
If your organisation is interested in expert workplace health advice and comprehensive behaviour change programs visit AlphaOne®.
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