Health promotion at the workplace and for workers is important. It includes promoting
healthy lifestyles, the maintenance and promotion of workers’ health and working capacity,
improvement of working environments and work practices 1], 2]. This is to ensure they are conducive to safety and health, as well as the development
of work organization and working cultures in a direction that supports health and
safety at work, promotes a positive social climate, which may enhance the productivity
of the enterprise 1]–3].
Companies governed by a collective bargaining agreement have a responsibility for
staff to undergo routine medical screening. These medical screening done as part of
health surveillance in the workplace aims to identify health risks and improve worker
productivity 3]. Health surveillance procedures are usually established in the workplace to contribute
to the prevention of work related ill health and to promote general health, i.e. the
physical, mental and social well-being of employees 1], 3]. Health surveillance at the workplace may be established to identify work-related
effects or non-work related effects of risks that workers are exposed to. Pre-employment,
fitness-for-work, occupational risk, and periodic medical examinations are all well
recognized health surveillance procedures 2], 3].
Workers are expose to numerous risk such as air pollution and contamination from workplace
activities, handling and dismantling of e-waste, ingestion and inhalation of poisonous
chemicals, gases, heavy metals or semivolatile organic compounds 4]–6]. In recent years there has been a steady growth of work related psychosocial stressor
characterized by strenuous work arrangements and increased job instability, which
holds particularly true for the media industry 7]. These hazardous exposures and stressors have implications on the health and wellbeing
of workers; periodic medical examinations and work place assessments are imperative.
However clear objectives for carrying out these medical examinations, the basis for
any sound workplace programme are often absent 8]. Organizational health should be viewed as one link in the chain of organizational
effectiveness. A company can be healthy for itself by growing and being efficient,
healthy for its employees by offering a healthy work environment and meeting their
growth needs. In addition, the company may be healthy for its customers by offering
good products and services, and healthy for the community by exhibiting concern not
only for its viability but also for the environment 9].
One way of making these workplace screening programmes meaningful, is to organize
a health risk assessment (HRA) for staff at the workplace 10]. This is a systematic approach to collecting information from individuals that identifies
risk factors, provides individualized feedback, and links the person with intervention
to promote health, sustain function and/or prevent disease 10]. A typical HRA instrument obtains information on demographic characteristics (e.g.
sex, age), lifestyle (e.g. smoking, exercise, alcohol consumption, diet), personal
medical history, and family medical history. In some cases, physiological data (e.g.,
height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol levels) are also obtained 1], 10], 11].
There have been suggestions for employers to contain health expenditures of their
workers through demand management programs at the workplace 12]. These programs are designed to reduce utilization by focusing on disease prevention,
work site health promotion, wellness programs, and access management. Work site health
promotion is a comprehensive approach to improving health through awareness creation,
health education, behavioral change, and organizational health initiatives 12].
It is critical to explain the benefits of the health risk assessment to workers, usually
the health professional asks asymptomatic individuals to participate in some diagnostic
or investigative procedure which may or may not seem directly beneficial to him or
her. Lifestyle health risk assessments aim to identify those lifestyles which contribute
to ill health and which can be modified to result in the prevention of illness, promote
the health of the individual worker and garner economic benefit to the company and
country 1], 2], 13]. These workplace assessments may not be done regularly by employers especially in
low income setting where national incomes are low and capacity to increase labour
cost are limited 14], 15].
The goal of this analysis was to provide an example of health risk assessment conducted
in a large media organization in Ghana for its workers and to identify correlates
of health risks among different categories of workers. A large media organization
was selected to provide a baseline assessment to promote this healthful activity among
employers and corporate enterprises in Ghana and other low income settings.