Workplace Well-being: How to Build Psychologically Healthy Workplaces

9 Culture, Communication, and Making Workplaces Healthier

David M. DeJoy¹ and Lindsay J. Della²

¹ University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

² University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologically healthy workplaces share five important characteristics (Grawitch, Gottschalk, & Munz, 2006). They provide opportunities for employee involvement, promote employee health and safety, foster work–life balance, support employee growth and development, and recognize employees for their achievements. Various other healthy workplace models also exist. For example, the National Quality Institute (NQI) in Canada has proposed a holistic model of workplace health that features physical, social, personal, and developmental organizational supports for overall worker health (NQI, 2007). The World Health Organization (WHO) has its healthy workplace model (World Health Organization, 2010) that emphasizes many of the same characteristics and the importance of both the physical and the psychosocial work environments. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the United States has its Total Worker Health framework (NIOSH, 2012). This framework is organized into three general categories: the employment relationship, the workplace, and the worker. In addition, a variety of other models have appeared in the literature under such labels as organizational health, healthy organization, or healthy work organization ...