Throughout the assignments we have gone over different tools and recourses that can help create culture of health. One tool I believe would be beneficial to use is the HERO scorecard. The HERO 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” (HERO, 2018). It is used regularly to examine how employee health, performance, and health plan cost is affected by employer initiatives. Overall, the scorecard is used to optimize health and wellbeing for employees and their families. 

 

The scorecard asks detailed questions about the organizational and cultural support strategies. There are six different sections that have questions. These sections are strategic planning, organization and cultural support, programs, program integration, participation strategies and measurements and evaluation. Each of theses sections focuses on different topics within the organization. It will show what sections the organization is doing well in and sections it needs to work on. This scorecard can help organizations continue to grow and help organization provide guidance and help focus on improvements. 

What is great about the HERO scorecard, it focuses on best practices in the organization. These practices range from organizational support for health, leadership involvement and methods of communicating the company’s health values, specific tactics such as policies and the physical environment features that address stress management, physical activity, eating habits, safety, tobacco, usage and work-life balance (The HERO Health and Well-being Best Practices Scorecard, 2017, pg.31). “The important role of strong organizational support in creating a culture of health and wellness has been widely recognized” (The HERO Health and Well-being Best Practices Scorecard, 2017, pg.31). When organization focuses on the different practices that the scorecard has, it build a stronger and healthier culture within it. 

 

Using the HERO scorecard will help me find the best practice for leadership support in the workplace. It will also give me a series of questions that help focus on the culture and environment in the organization. To have a successful program, I need to focus on what the type of leadership, culture and environment the organization is to help improve wellbeing. Overall, the HERO scorecard would allow me to see where the organization is currently in different health and wellness areas and then allow me to take what I need to help my program I will be developing. My goal is to reduce stress within the organization. HERO has some questions that relate to stress management in the workplace that would give me an idea of the stress in the organization. From HERO scorecard, I would use a stress management survey to focus on my topic deeper. WELCOA, has example stress survey and job satisfaction that would be beneficial to also use with the HERO scorecard. The HERO scorecard is a tool that is a best practice to also use for the future when once the program is completed to see if there has been any positive changes with leadership, culture, and environment.

 

 References:

What pushed me to pursue this topic is recently I have noticed myself not being aware of my own personal well-being. Work and school started to take over each day that I forgot to put my well-being first. For example, I used to take walks each day as a break at work and sat down with other staff to eat lunch. I have yet to go on a walk since June and I either am eating at my lunch or not eating lunch for the day. I could feel the stress building up inside me and I knew I needed to learn better ways to cope. I also started to observe more of my co-workers dealing with stress negatively, which sparked the thought of how stress is affecting employees’ well-being in the workplace. 

Working with my classmates allowed me to see different points of views than my own on health and wellness. It was also great to collaborate with them and discuss different topics of health and wellness. I found it quite interesting to see how each person had a different idea when it came down to our proposal. The padlet was nice to see how my classmates were doing and if they had any resources I could benefit from. However, I feel like it might be nice to find a better tool than the padlet because it can be hard to organize. 

 

Looking back at the beginning of the semester and now, I wish I had a better idea of what I wanted to do. I felt like I had so many different ideas that during my first initial proposal I had no idea what I was doing and it didn’t make sense. I wished I asked more questions and started researching earlier. I thought we had to definitely make a program, but my heart wasn’t into making a program. It changed into finding the data and how this data can be used to eventually make a program in the future. I wish I also would have found an organization that was not the one I currently worked at, but I am still excited to do my it at my organization because I know in the end it would be beneficial. It just would have been nice for a scenery change. 

·      Interview with Human Resources Director 

o   Demographics of employees

o   CDC Worksite Health Scorecard

§  Sections: background information, stress management, occupational health and safety

§  https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/pubs/docs/HSC_Manual.pdf

·      Interview with the Union Representative 

o    Employees who are in the union and if there are any wellness benefits that union provides

·      Interview with the administrator 

o   Receive data on the quality assurance and performance improvement (QAPI) survey that focuses on retention, absenteeism, safety of employees, etc.

·      Participants complete The Health and Safety Executive Management Indicator Tool

o   http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/assets/docs/indicatortool.pdf

·      Participants complete the General Social Survey: Quality of Worklife Module NIOSH

o   https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/stress/pdfs/qwl2010.pdf

·      CDC’s Tool for Observing Worksite Environments

o   https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/pdf/TOWE-508.pdf

·      Employee Interest Survey

o   To find what type of stress initiative’s employees would be interested in if Lynnhurst would to implement one in the future. 

•Conservation of Resources Theory (COR)

•Transactional Model of Stress