Health Promoting Workplaces

Abstract

Workplace health promotion is a process of actively achieving health at workplace by changing working and living conditions. As a key concept it includes measures aimed both at individual and at environmental level from different areas. Good practice in workplace health promotion demands statutory requirements and strong motivation. Increasing consciousness and responsibility for health, identification and dissemination of models of good practice, development and incorporating adequate policies are priorities in workplace health promotion. The basic principles on which workplace health promotion has to be developed are: awareness raising, setting up infrastructure and service management. Beneficial effects can be achieved on individual, enterprise and society levels. The Institute of Occupational Health, WHO Collaborating Center, plays a major role in launching the first workplace health promotion activities in the Republic of Macedonia (education programs for stress managing at workplace, tobacco free workplaces), but the strongest impulse for workplace health promotion in the country is created by the implementation of the WHO’s Health, Environment and Safety Management in Enterprises (HESME) program.