Workplace Wellness: Issues and Responses

Abstract

In this book, contributing scholars, practitioners, and researchers offer their practice experience and findings related to creating workplace wellness with emphases on the intellectual, vocational, physical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs of workers and the structures and policies within their workplaces.

The first section of the book, “The Hazardous Workplace,” addresses the stressful workplace, workplace violence, bullying, and counselling in an environment where stress is high and work entails more than the usual amount of risk. “Workplace Responses,” the second section, examines the history of occupational assistance, several models of employee assistance practice, the workplace management of dis/abilities, complications around drug testing on the job, the relevance of spirituality to the workplace, an Aboriginal perspective on work, and an evaluative mechanism for occupational programming.

Intake and assessment, crisis intervention, critical incident stress management, brief treatment, counselling employees suffering from depression or experiencing grief, and the role of mediation inside and outside of the workplace are explored in the third section, entitled “Practice to Create Well Workplace.” And finally, four Case Studies comprise the final section, spanning the country while representing five very different work sites, including a child welfare organization in Ontario, the workforce of the University of Saskatchewan, a Canadian public sector employee assistance program, and a religious site where occupational assistance has been applied to a church community.