Capital Health is the largest health district in Nova Scotia. More than 10,000 people work at Capital Health, making us the second largest employer in Nova Scotia after the provincial civil service. The people who work at Capital Health have enormous talent and capacity and are dedicated to providing quality care, even in the face of challenges. In order to support employees and physicians to provide this care, Capital Health made creating a healthy workplace one of four strategic directions in 2002.

Capital Health now has a Healthy Workplace Department whose job it is to collaborate with many others, particularly our Healthy Workplace Council, to make our organization a great place to work. The Human Resources Department is a key partner in this work.

The Healthy Workplace Department employs health promotion evidence and programming to contribute to creating a healthy workplace. Our programming is built on a commitment to engage Capital Health employees, physicians and volunteers to work collaboratively towards creating a shared responsibility for health.

We use a population health approach to creating a healthy workplace, which means that we are getting at what determines health in organizations, not just the effects of ill health such as stress, absence, bad behaviour etc. The greatest determinants of health in organizations are how we manage, how we communicate and how we make decisions. Many of us at Capital Health are working to impact this deeper level.

We work with the Healthy Workplace Council and others at Capital Health using a community development approach - supporting teams or communities to determine and act on the priority health issues.

Capital Health uses a population health framework which sets the stage for getting at the fundamental drivers of health in organizations - how we manage, how we communicate and how we make decisions. The Healthy Workplace Team leads and facilitates initiatives using community development principles recognizing that there is inherent talent and value in our internal community that we need to tap into and foster. Health promotion strategies such as personal skills building and creating supportive environments are essential tenants of our approach to this work.

We evaluated our progress toward a healthy workplace based on strategy measures developed for the 2002-2006 strategic plan. This comprehensive report indicates that we have made progress in some areas and have opportunities to improve our performance in others. We plan to use this report as body of evidence for our 2006-2010 strategic plan.

Last Updated: 2/24/2009 4:20:00 PM