"The wealth of business depends on the health of workers"
Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health and Environment, WHO
The concept of organizational health was first discussed in literatures 1969 when Matthew B. Miles developed an initial conceptual framework. His hypothesis was that the outputs of any organization will be impacted by the internal dynamics of the whole system. He was right and now we have global guidelines for creating healthy organizations.
One of the more widespread definitions of health is the one made by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO defines health in the following way: "A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease". Physical health is about how the body feels and works. Mental health is explained as "a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community." Social health is about the quality of our social relations.
With background to this, the following definition of a healthy workplace was developed:
"A healthy workplace is one in which workers and managers collaborate to use a continual improvement process to protect and promote the health, safety and well-being of all workers and the sustainability of the workplace by considering the following, based on identified needs:
health and safety concerns in the physical work environment
health, safety and well-being concerns in the psychosocial work environment, including organization of work and workplace culture
personal health resources in the workplace, and
wyas of participating in the community to improve the health of workers, their families and other members of this community.
WHO themselves concludes that this definition reflects how the understanding of occupational health has evolved from an almost exclusive focus on the physical work environment to inclusion of psychosocial and personal health practice factors.
Six specific clear signs - indicators - of organizational health according to research are that:
There is a strong sense of job satisfaction
There is a strong sense of shared job satisfaction
You feel good; both in a physical, a cognitive and psychological way
You would like to stay at your workplace - and also recommend it to others
You feel that the organization is managed in an efficient way where time and resources are used in the best way and that this also leads to high quality services and products
The workplace is not characterized by injustice and suspicion or where people are treated badly
