2.3.2. Occupational Health and Safety and Wellness Activities

A workplace's OHS activities were measured by the availability of factors related to safe and effective OHS performance as an alternative measure to the number of OHS activities offered by workplaces as these can vary by working conditions and industry sector. For example, workplaces in high hazard industries are likely to overrepresent higher OHS activities than other workplaces. Occupational health and safety performance was measured using the Institute for Work & Health's Organizational Performance Metric (IWH-OPM) tool, which has been shown to be predictive (i.e., valid and reliable) of future injury and illness rates [27,28]. The eight-item IWH-OPM tool was developed by a consensus process among a team of researchers and health and safety professionals [28]. For each IWH-OPM item, respondents rated the percent of time that certain practices occurred in their workplace, from 1 (0–20%) to 5 (80–100%). Scores for each item were summed to estimate a total OHS performance score, with a highest score of 40 (a score of 5 for all items) indicating that all eight OHS practices took place most to all the time in a workplace.

A workplace's wellness activities were assessed by dichotomous ("yes" or "no") responses to the question: "during the last 12 months, did your company offer any of the following programs to employees and/or their families?" The range of wellness activities were selected from the literature and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Workplace Health Model [29,30]. Wellness programs included screenings (blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and cancer), smoking cessation classes, physical activity and/or fitness classes, and educational resources. Wellness policies included flexible work hours to engage in wellness activities, encouraging fitness breaks, and healthy food choices. Supportive environments for wellness activities included providing shower facilities, signage to encourage stair use, and on-site fitness facilities or walking trails. The total number of wellness activities was derived from a total score of 25 possible options.
