As a joint business-labour organization, the Canadian Labour and Business Centre (CLBC) recognizes that workplace safety, health and wellness can make a fundamental contribution to the objectives and priorities of both constituencies. The CLBC therefore undertook a project to document and analyze the innovative healthy workplace practices of twelve Canadian organizations, in order to promote workplace health more broadly within the management and labour communities and encourage other workplaces to undertake similar initiatives.

The CLBC research focused on those initiatives which affected the workplace physical environment (safety, ergonomics, etc.); health practices (supporting healthy lifestyles); and social environment and personal resources (organizational culture, a sense of control over one’s work, etc.). Researchers explored the motivations behind these initiatives; the role of management and workers/unions in developing and maintaining them; the relationship between the initiatives and the organization’s ‘business strategy’; and the impact of the initiatives on employee health and workplace performance.

The research concluded that in the view of the studied workplaces, workplace health pays. All the workplaces pointed to benefits, either in terms of employee health indicators or in terms of workplace performance and ‘bottom line’ indicators. While the indicators varied in terms of their focus and formality, they were sufficient to convince management to continue with their workplace health activities.

As the CEO of one health sector workplace pointed out,

“You cannot separate out staff well-being from client/patient satisfaction”.

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