Workplace health promotion interventions in EU-27 public administrations.

Abstract

Purpose: The objective of this article is to make an exploratory study about European public administrations (public administration, public agencies, public law entities, entities dependent on the public administration and public universities) in relation to workplace health promotion interventions. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 countries. Four WHPI have been studied: healthy nutrition interventions, sports activities after working hours, back exercises at work and prevention of addictions.

Design/methodology/approach: This is an exploratory study. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 Public Administration. In total, 45,420 establishments were interviewed.

Findings: Different patterns have been observed when implementing workplace health promotion interventions in the EU-27 public administration. The promotion of sports activities outside working hours is the one with the highest level of implementation in European public administration. On the other hand, the measure with the least implementation level is the promotion of healthy nutrition.

Research limitations/implications: The limitations of the study are that the studied items are nominal and comprise more than two categories, so it has not been possible to develop a correlation analysis.

Practical implications: The EU-27 public administrations can see which workplace health promotion interventions need to be improved.

Originality/value: Differences that may exist in the adopted workplace health promotion interventions by European public administrations have not yet been addressed in depth by the literature.