Work health, safety, and wellbeing strategy and employee engagement: a mixed-methods study: Volumes I and II

Work health, safety, and wellbeing strategy and employee engagement: a mixed-methods study: Volumes I and II

Research suggests that many organisations do not see how investing in workplace health, safety, and wellbeing (WHSW) adds value in terms of the indicators that are used to determine its value, as many relate to improvements in work-related injury and illness occurrence and workers' compensation costs. Furthermore, it has become clear that the reliance on traditional approaches and systems to WHSW alone is not going to achieve the desired level of workplace health and safety performance (Borys et al. 2012) as work-related injury and illness remains a significant problem (and cost) at around 5% of Gross Domestic Product to the Australian economy (O’Neill, Martinov-Bennie & Cheung 2013). Despite the emerging concern around employee wellbeing and mental health, there has been a distinct lack of research into workplace health and safety leading to calls for further research in this area from a business perspective (Zanko & Dawson 2012).

As a prominent business issue there remains limited evidence in the literature about the relationship between business strategy, workplace health, safety, wellbeing, and performance measurement that demonstrate measurable impact on organisational performance. Whilst the literature reports numerous studies into the relationship between employee engagement and efficacy, they hardly incorporate workplace health, safety, and wellbeing issues within this relationship. This mixed-methods study investigated the relationship between workplace health, safety and wellbeing strategy, employee engagement, and strategy efficacy. The study was also able to investigate the moderating effect of leadership on this relationship. A key assumption of the study as derived from the literature was that WHSW strategy and employee engagement are indicators of efficacy. Findings from the interviews and survey identified 17 key findings. These findings indicated that the WHSW strategy and employee engagement framework was deemed a suitable framework for high-risk businesses to improve individual and organisational performance.