The 2016 Workplace Wellness conference in Melbourne has heard about the Workhealth Improvement Network (WIN) through a panel of WIN participants. The point of difference of this panel is that the participants are from a range of different sized and regional companies. The significance of this difference should not be understated as conferences rarely include …
Last week the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) released a review of the WorkHealth program. The results are very positive and deserve detailed analysis. However these analyses do not seem to address all the expectations of the Victorian Government when the program was launched several years ago. Premier John Brumby said at the … Continue reading “WorkHealth raises health awareness but only so far”
The Victorian Workcover Authority’s (VWA) WorkHealth program is coming to the end of its five-year life. But what is the way forward? Has the $A600 million program achieved its aims? Aims and Results VWA’s annual report for 2008 (page 33) stated the following aims for WorkHealth, reiterated in the WorkHealth Strategic Framework 2010-12 (page 1): “Over the long … Continue reading “Where to for the “the expensive and failed WorkHealth scheme”?”
Several years ago the board of WorkSafe Victoria decided to fund a $A600 million health assessment program for workers from the workers’ compensation fund. The WorkHealth program has not been without its critics but WorkSafe announced this week that 1 in 4 Victorian workers have participated in the WorkHealth program. Given this significance I undertook a work … Continue reading “Is fat the past tense of fit? WorkHealth assessment”
WorkHealth has released some data on the results of its first wave of free health checks (not yet available online) “Recent results from tests of 3500 workers conducted as part of the ….WorkHealth program found more than half were overweight and/or had high blood pressure while a quarter had high levels of blood cholesterol.” These figures are … Continue reading “Early worker health statistics from WorkHealth”
Victoria’s WorkHealth program is due to roll-out its next stage of worker health assessments. However, the program has been seriously curtailed by the failure of its funding model. According to The Age newspaper on 18 may 2009, employer associations have begun to withdraw their support compounding the embarrassment to the Premier, John Brumby, who lauded the … Continue reading “WorkHealth concerns increase”
Early in 2008, the Victorian Government sprung a surprise on the OHS and health promotion industries by announcing a world-first initiative – WorkHealth. This program was to be funded by interest generated from the WorkCover scheme to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years. WorkHealth loses stakeholder support Two … Continue reading “WorkHealth – end is nigh after less than one year”