NIOSH Develops Work Health Assessment Tool
Originally published by: EHS Today — April 15, 2021
The following article was produced and published by the source linked to above, who is solely responsible for its content. SBC Magazine is publishing this story to raise awareness of information publicly available online and does not verify the accuracy of the author’s claims. As a consequence, SBC cannot vouch for the validity of any facts, claims or opinions made in the article.
In order to help employers understand well-being and design interventions to achieve well- being, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health ( NISOH) announced on April 9 the Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ).
NIOSH
“Worker well-being is a unifying concept that characterizes quality of life with respect to a person’s working conditions, circumstances outside of work, and physical and mental health status,” said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. in a statement. “NIOSH is excited to offer this new tool that anyone can use to evaluate worker well-being in order to help identify opportunities to advance worker well-being through workplace policies, programs, and practices.”
The NIOSH WellBQ is guided by the worker well-being framework external icon designed by NIOSH and the RAND Corporation. This framework identifies five domains of worker well-being:
- Work Evaluation and Experience
- Workplace Policies and Culture
- Workplace Physical Environment and Safety Climate
- Health Status
- Home, Community, and Society
The questionnaire comprises 68 questions representative of the five domains of worker well-being. Complementing these are 15 optional items about employment and demographic information.
Some of the groups that NIOSH envisions the tool helping include:
- Employers, worker health and well-being professionals, and decision-makers can use the NIOSH WellBQ to inform decisions to advance worker well-being in the workforce as a whole or within various worker subpopulations such as industry and occupational sectors or demographic groups.
- Occupational safety & health and public health experts and policymakers can use the NIOSH WellBQ to monitor changes in worker well-being in relation to economic conditions, societal trends, or changing governmental or organizational policies.
- Researchers and organizational consultants can use the NIOSH WellBQ to assess the well-being of a working population before, during, and after an intervention.
Note: The NIOSH website has more information on the tWellBQ including:
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Resources for action
- NIOSH WellBQ document, including the Codebook and Item Source Table
- Stand-alone NIOSH WellBQ instrument
