Quality of working life indicators in Canadian health care organizations: a tool for healthy, health care workplaces?

Background Quality-of-work-life (QWL) includes broad aspects of the work environment that affect employee learning and health. Canadian health care organizations (HCOs) are being encouraged to monitor QWL, expanding existing occupational health surveillance capacities. Aim To investigate the understanding, collection, diffusion and use of QWL indicators in Canadian HCOs. Methods We obtained cooperation from six diverse public HCOs managing 41 sites. We reviewed documentation relevant to QWL and conducted 58 focus groups/team interviews with strategic, support and programme teams. Group interviews were taped, reviewed and analysed for themes using qualitative data techniques. Indicators were classified by purpose and HCO level. Results QWL indicators, as such, were relatively new to most HCOs yet the data managed by human resource and occupational health and safety support teams were highly relevant to monitoring of employee well-being (119 of 209 mentioned indicators), e.g. sickness absence. Monitoring of working conditions (62/209) was also important, e.g. indicators of employee workload. Uncommon were indicators of biomechanical and psychosocial hazards at work, despite their being important causes of morbidity among HCO employees. Although imprecision in the definition of QWL indicators, limited links with other HCO performance measures and inadequate HCO resources for implementation were common, most HCOs cited ways in which QWL indicators had influenced planning and evaluation of prevention efforts. Conclusions Increase in targeted HCO resources, inclusion of other QWL indicators and greater integration with HCO management systems could all improve HCO decision-makers' access to information relevant to employee health.