Using Total Worker Health^® Implementation Guidelines to Design an Organizational Intervention for Low-Wage Food Service Workers: The Workplace Organizational Health Study

• Main Authors: Eve M. Nagler, Elisabeth A. Stelson, Melissa Karapanos, Lisa Burke, Lorraine M. Wallace, Susan E. Peters, Karina Nielsen, Glorian Sorensen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-09-01
• Series: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
• Subjects: total worker health; intervention development; working conditions; occupational safety and health; food service workers; wellbeing
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9383
• ISSN: 1661-7827; 1660-4601

Total Worker Health^® (TWH) interventions that utilize integrated approaches to advance worker safety, health, and well-being can be challenging to design and implement in practice. This may be especially true for the food service industry, characterized by high levels of injury and turnover. This paper illustrates how we used TWH Implementation Guidelines to develop and implement an organizational intervention to improve pain, injury, and well-being among low-wage food service workers. We used the Guidelines to develop the intervention in two main ways: first, we used the six key characteristics of an integrated approach (leadership commitment; participation; positive working conditions; collaborative strategies; adherence; data-driven change) to create the foundation of the intervention; second, we used the four stages to guide integrated intervention planning. For each stage (engaging collaborators; planning; implementing; evaluating for improvement), the Guidelines provided a flexible and iterative process to plan the intervention to improve safety and ergonomics, work intensity, and job enrichment. This paper provides a real-world example of how the Guidelines can be used to develop a complex TWH intervention for food service workers that is responsive to organizational context and addresses targeted working conditions. Application of the Guidelines is likely transferable to other industries.