Objective: This study examines employee perceptions of safety and health climates for well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of small businesses. Methods: We evaluated changes to employees’ work and home life resulting from COVID-19 and perceptions of safety and health climates. Cross-sectional relationships were assessed using multivariable linear regression models for a sample of 491 employees from 30 small businesses in Colorado in May 2020. Results: Employee perceptions of safety and health climates were significantly related to their self-reported well-being during the first wave of COVID-19, even when there were changes to childcare, the ability to work, and limited social contacts. Conclusion: Safety and health climates may influence employee well-being even when other disruptions occur, suggesting that during emergencies, small businesses with strong climates may be better prepared to maintain employee well-being.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Total Worker Health^® (TWH) business strategies and employee perceptions of leadership commitment and safety and health climates. Using data from 53 small enterprises and 1271 of their workers collected as part of the Small + Safe + Well (SSWell) Study, we confirm the primacy of the relationship between leadership commitment to safety and workplace safety climate. After accounting for leadership commitment to safety, business-reported policies and practices that promote the health, safety, and well-being of workers (i.e., TWH strategies) were no longer related to safety climate. In contrast, the relationship between TWH strategies and health climate were significantly associated with the level of small business leadership commitment to worksite wellness. Relatedly, our results demonstrate that leadership is a common correlate to both safety climate and health climate. Future research should investigate integrated TWH leadership development strategies as a means of simultaneously improving safety and health climates.

The COVID-19 pandemic created workplace challenges for employee safety and health, especially in small enterprises. We used linear mixed-effects regression to examine changes in health climate, safety climate, and worker well-being, prior to the pandemic and at two timepoints during it. We also examined whether employees at organizations that had received a TWH leadership development intervention prior to COVID-19 would better maintain pre-pandemic perceptions of climates and well-being. The final study cohort consisted of 261 employees from 31 organizations. No differences were observed in mean outcome scores between the leadership intervention groups at any of the survey timepoints. We combined intervention groups to examine the difference across timepoints. Perceptions of health and safety climates remained stable across all timepoints. However, employee well-being scores declined between the pre-pandemic period and subsequent COVID-19 timepoints. These findings suggest that while small organizations continued to be viewed as supporting employees’ health and safety over the course of the pandemic, well-being scores declined, indicating that other factors contributed to decreased well-being. The findings from this study have implications for small business leaders as they navigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health, safety, and well-being on their organizations and employees.

Objectives: As the commercial cannabis industry grows, there is an increased need to characterize potentially hazardous workplace exposures and provide training to workers to mitigate these exposures with the goal of reducing accidents and injuries from cannabis cultivation, processing, and manufacturing. Public health and safety stakeholders in Colorado developed a worker-focused training designed to improve hazard awareness, recognition, and controls related to commercial cannabis cultivation. This paper describes the evaluation of this training. Methods: The training was a full day, in-person educational experience directed to workers in the cannabis cultivation industry. Training topics included an overview of occupational safety and health hazards, chemical exposures, slip, trips, and falls, repetitive motion, the application of the hierarchy of control including lockout/tagout, machine guarding, personal protective equipment, among others. Evaluation surveys assessed attendee demographics, perceived job hazards, confidence to change workplace practices, knowledge, training relevancy and quality, intent to change behavior, as well as barriers and resources. Results: A total of 208 people attended the safety trainings. One hundred and thirty-four participants (64%) completed the pre-training survey and 107 (51%) completed the post-training survey. Respondents provided high ratings for the quality and relevance of the training, with 91.3% of respondents rating the training very good or excellent. Before the training, the attendees listed their most concerning safety and health issues as exposure to pesticides and other chemicals (65.7%), absorbing chemicals through the skin (56.7%), slips, trips, and falls (52.2%), and respiratory hazards (50.7%). After the training, they reported the most concerning hazards to be slips, trips, and fall hazards (65.4%), ergonomic problems (64.5%), and respiratory issues (61.7%). There was a statistically non-significant increase in knowledge scores from 67.1% correct to 76.0% correct. Finally, 88.5% of respondents felt extremely or very confident that they could change their own health and safety practices at work. Conclusions: The training successfully reached cannabis employees in cultivation, compliance, and management. Survey respondents felt that the training was of high quality and addressed gaps in their knowledge related to safety and health hazards in the cannabis industry. The workplace safety and health concerns shifted from pre- to post-training. There was a statistically non-significant increase in knowledge. Additional follow-up of training attendees would be beneficial to measure sustained impact of training.

The role of dissemination and implementation (D&I) science is critical to the translation of Total Worker Health^® into practice and to the success of interventions in addressing current and future implications for worker safety, health, and well-being. D&I frameworks can guide researchers to design Total Worker Health (“TWH”) delivery approaches that use flexible implementation strategies to implement the core components of programs for employers with varying contextual factors, including small/mid/large-sized businesses and different industry types. To date, there have been very few examples of applying implementation frameworks for the translation and delivery of interventions into organizational settings that require adoption and implementation at the business level to benefit the working individuals. We present a TWH case study, Health Links™, to illustrate an approach to applying an existing implementation framework, RE-AIM, to plan, design, build, and then evaluate TWH implementation strategies. Our case study also highlights key concepts for scaling-out TWH evidence-based interventions where they are implemented in new workplace settings, new delivery systems, or both. Our example provides strong support of key implementation planning constructs including early and consistent stakeholder engagement, tailored messaging and marketing, flexibility, and adaptations in implementation strategies to maximize adoption, implementation, and maintenance among participating businesses.

Objective: We sought to test whether a 2-week Total Worker Health (TWH) training mapped to TWH education competencies could be administered to a Mexican audience of occupational safety and health professionals and could lead to positive changes to knowledge and behaviors. Methods: This study used robust program evaluation methods collected before and after each of the nine training days and at the end of the course. Results: Overall course quality received a mean score of 4.6 (SD = 0.6) and 98.8% of participants agreed that their TWH knowledge increased. All participants intended to make at least one change to their professional practice, most frequently helping companies assess their organizational culture to support health, safety, and well-being. Conclusions: This TWH training was well received and led to positive self-reported increase in knowledge and abilities to influence workers’ health, safety, and well-being.