A joint approach to health and sustainability in the workplace

Maintaining and promoting the health of employees, as well as pursuing sustainability goals, are among the key challenges facing companies in the future. Although these two agendas are closely linked, in practice they are often addressed separately. Systematically linking health and sustainability in the workplace can help to meet sustainability standards whilst simultaneously strengthening the importance of workplace health promotion (WHP).

This application-oriented, cross-border research project, commissioned by the Fonds Gesundes Österreich and the BKK Dachverband in Germany, focused on the

following questions: 1) Why should Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) focus more on the issue of sustainability, and what benefits does this bring for sustainability management? 2) What quality criteria characterise a workplace that is both healthy and sustainable? 3) How can the topics of Workplace Health Promotion and sustainability be linked?

To answer these questions, a qualitative-exploratory research design (cf. Flick, 2021) was employed to answer these questions, comprising a comprehensive literature review and analysis, a document analysis, guided online interviews with 16 company representatives, and an online focus group with company representatives from Austria and Germany. The key findings of the project are:

1. a set of arguments for linking the themes of health and sustainability in the workplace,
2. 42 quality criteria for workplaces that are both healthy and sustainable, and

a step-by-step guide with practical suggestions for gradually integrating the two topics into business practice.