Workplace Health Promotion in the Public Administration Sector
3rd Initiative (2001 - 2002)
In this project ENWHP researched the situation regarding WHP in public administrations in Europe and documented models of good practice.
Objectives
| To provide an overview of the status in workplace health promotion (WHP) and occupational health and safety (OHS) in the public administration sector in Europe |
| To identify and document Models Of Good Practice (MOGP) based on defined quality criteria. |
Description/Methodology
There has been a consensus in European countries since the 1990’s concerning the need to modernise the public administration sector.
The way employees are managed, motivated and trained/educated has a considerable influence on their feelings of wellbeing and their health and consequently on their efficiency and on the quality of the services they provide to clients.
A data collection manual was developed for analysing and documenting the level of WHP and OHS in public administrations in each participant country. Good practice criteria were also developed to provide researchers with a uniform and consistent orientation framework.
34 MOGP from 19 countries were identified and documented and discussed in detail by a variety of ENWHP experts in a quality assurance workshop.
Under the title “Healthy Workplaces Towards Quality and Innovation- Working Together for a Social and Competitive Europe”, the project and the results were presented in a Conference held in Barcelona (17-18 June 2002)
Main findings
WHP strategies and action can provide added value to the public administration reform process.
Modernising public administration increases psychosocial risks and physical burdens. Higher rates of older workers and absenteeism are found in public administration. Health related interventions need to be integrated into processes of reform.
WHP projects and programmes have been only been implemented in public administration organisations to a limited extent. There is a need to adapt the successful strategies of WHP which were mainly developed in the private sector to the specific requirements of public administrations.
With the increasing use of IT throughput the sector, there is a need to learn about and manage the health and safety risks related to posture, repeated movement and handling.
Outputs
POLICY
Barcelona Declaration (PDF 0.6 MB)
PRACTICE
Description of the MOGP (PDF 0.7 MB)
REPORT
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Barcelona Conference (PDF 0.5 MB)
Countries involved
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein/Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.