An employee-centered framework for healthy workplaces: implementing a critically holistic, participative, and structural model through the Equitable Food Initiative

ABSTRACT

Critical scholars have critiqued workplace health promotion (WHP) discourses for extending managerial influence on workers’ lives, shifting health responsibilities to workers, and disregarding occupational health and safety (OHS) and other structural issues. This essay promotes a worker-centered framework for workplace health, featuring (1) the holistic integration of WHP, OHS, and wellness as well as economic, environmental, and consumer health, (2) substantive worker voice, and (3) structural mechanisms to support worker interests. A case study of five Equitable Food Initiative (EFI)-certified farms demonstrates how these features can be enacted in practice. EFI is a multi-stakeholder, third-party verification and consumer labeling initiative aimed at improving farm working conditions, promoting food safety and environmental stewardship, and boosting business outcomes. Although EFI was not designed as a traditional OHS or WHP initiative, the certified farms in this study model an integrated and participatory approach to employee well-being that also encompasses fenceline communities and consumers.

KEYWORDS:

• workplace health promotion
• occupational safety
• workplace wellness
• organizational communication
• health communication
• farm labor
• Total Worker Health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Audits are conducted by SCS Global Services or Elevate.

2 Standard HS 1.1 stipulates that LTs have ‘responsibility for identifying, reviewing and resolving workplace health and safety issues, including but not limited to first aid, pesticide safety, transportation safety, reducing and responding to heat stress, and preventing and responding to sexual harassment.’

3 A Site B manager described the operation’s CSR commitments: ‘I think it's worth the EFI certification because … The people buying the product know the product and the people are treated well,’ adding, ‘You see that everyone is working quietly, cared for, and they continue to work well. For the mental and moral tranquility of my employees.’

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Berkeley Food Institute, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation [grant #2015-62308], and the Waterhouse Family Institute.