A preliminary examination of the associations among worksite environment, worksite health culture, and modifiable employee health risk

Abstract

In recent years, the focus of worksite health promotion has begun to shift from the individual employee to the worksite environment and health culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-sectional associations among corporate environmental support for health, employee perceptions of the worksite health culture, and levels of individual modifiable health risk across multiple worksites. Individual Health Risk Appraisals (HRAs) were administered to 1664 workers representing 14 companies from Western New York. Corporate environmental support for the health was assessed using the New York State Department of Health's (NYSDOH) Heart Check (HC), and Lifegain© Health Culture Audit (LHCA) was used to measure individual employee perceptions of the supportiveness of the worksite health culture. At the worksite level, several strong and significant correlations were identified between HC scores and LHCA scores. Factors of each HC and LHCA to significantly and inversely relate to the average number of modifiable employee health risk factors were also identified. At the individual level, a number of LHCA factors were found to be predictive of levels of modifiable health risk among employees. These results provide evidence that the worksite environment is directly related to employee perceptions of a health-supporting worksite culture, and that components of each construct are inversely related to levels of modifiable health risk. These findings could have important implications in the strategic planning of worksite health promotion interventions and suggest the need for a deeper examination of how these constructs relate to each other and to modifiable health risk.