Employees with a low socioeconomic position as partners in workplace health promotion. How employees’ lifeworld can shape intervention and evaluation.

Summary

Workplace health promotion for employees with a low socioeconomic position is considered promising. However, existing interventions at work have limited impact on the health of employees. One of the explanations given for this is that the interventions do not match employees’ lifeworld. This thesis centralizes around an innovative intervention, consisting of stakeholder dialogue. In these dialogues, employees share experiences regarding health from daily life. The health themes are chosen together with the employees and other stakeholders, such as the management. This is namely a characteristic of the also innovative evaluation method in the field of workplace health promotion, responsive evaluation. Participants of the study determine the desired outcomes and subjects of the evaluation. The intervention has been implemented in two organizations, a service provider in the port of Rotterdam and a sheltered workplace in Brabant. The general conclusion of the thesis is that dialogue can contribute to a learning process in organizations, allowing adjustments to be made in the work environment and health programs that are relevant to employees.