Creating healthy workplaces
June 2016
Citation:
Pidd, K., Cameron, J., Roche, A., & Lee, N. (2016). Creating healthy workplaces. Final report: Reducing alcohol-related harm. VicHealth, Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne.
This report outlines the findings from NCETA’s three year trial Reducing Alcohol-Related Harm in the Workplace project (known as Workplace Reduction of Alcohol-Related Harm Project or WRAHP) funded by VicHealth. The project built on NCETA’s 15 year workplace research program and involved a comprehensive and tailored intervention designed to build knowledge on how to reduce alcohol-related harm in the workplace. The project implemented a whole-of-workplace approach to reducing employee alcohol consumption as it is known that the social, structural and environmental factors of a person’s workplace influence their alcohol use, alongside their own individual behaviour and attitudes.
NCETA invited LeeJenn Health Consultants and the Southeast Business Network to partner on the project. The project yielded important positive findings.
The Reducing Alcohol-Related Harm project is one of the few empirical interventions that demonstrate success in reducing drinking to levels closer to those recommended in Australia’s Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking Alcohol. The project significantly reduced risky drinking and ‘presenteeism’ (the number of employees coming to work unwell or with a hangover), while improving attitudes to alcohol, employee awareness of the workplace alcohol and drug policy, and access to alcohol-related health and wellbeing services.
The report documents what we learned from the project and sheds some light on effective and acceptable ways to reduce alcohol-related harm. Importantly, it presents templates for alcohol harm reduction policies, tools, resources and training programs that can be applied to different industries and contexts.
This report is particularly relevant for policymakers, employers, and workplace health practitioners.
Download report from the NCETA website.
Peer-reviewed publications stemming from the project are in train. Further details about NCETA’s WorkLife program to assist workplaces manage AOD related risk and develop workplace policies and responses are available on our website.
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