Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2014

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department (Legacy)

Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education

Committee Chair

Herd, Ann Mogan

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Githens, Rod

Committee Member

Alagaraja, Meera

Committee Member

Hambrick, Marion

Subject

Employee health promotion; Industrial hygiene; Work environment; Employees--Attitudes

Abstract

Worksite wellness programs have historically focused on the modification of individual employee behavior (e.g., Shepard, 1981). Scholars have recently engaged in a discussion about the role the workplace environment plays in employee health behavior (e.g., Golaszewski, Allen, & Edington, 2008). The present correlational study contributes to this conversation by defining the relationship between employees’ perceptions of leadership support for health promotion and employees’ perceptions of organizational health climate and its impact on employee health and work behaviors and attitudes; and by examining the extent to which variance in work and health behaviors may be accounted for by employees’ perceptions of leadership support for health promotion and by employees’ perceptions of organizational health climate. Online and paper-based surveys were used to collect data from the employees (n = 621) at four organizations in the southeast United States. Study findings indicated that employees’ perceptions of leadership support for health promotion were predictive of employee participation in wellness program activities. The study also found that employees’ perceptions of organizational health climate were predictive of job satisfaction, job stress, and employee engagement. Overall, the results of this study confirm the importance of leadership support for health promotion and organizational health climate in the strategic development, management and continuation of workplace wellness. These findings have important implications for practice as employees’ perceptions of leadership support for health promotion and employees’ perceptions of organizational health climate were found to be key leverage points for employee participation in wellness activities and for employee health behavior change. Future research can extend these findings by continuing to bridge the organizational behavior, management, and human resource development research with the public health research on workplace wellness.

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