Improving employee wellbeing from the top down: The importance of organisational culture in the planning and delivery of workplace health programmes (a PhD summary)

Introduction
Contact centre workers sit more, move less, and are at increased risk for negative occupational health outcomes such as anxiety and depression. Organisational culture factors such as strict schedules and productivity pressure often impede the effectiveness of programmes to reduce these health risks. Despite its significance, organisational culture is often overlooked during the development and implementation of workplace health programmes. COVID-19 further complicated organisational culture-related associations to health programmes in contact centres.

Aim
PhD aim: to explore and explain how organisational culture impacts the implementation and sustainability of workplace programmes aimed at improving the health of employees, using contact centres as case studies.

Methods
1.Study 1 involved stakeholder interviews (n=16). It explored how organisational culture influenced health programmes in contact centres and if/how COVID-19 disrupted these associations.
2.Study 2 was a rapid review which explored the characteristics of organisational-level workplace health interventions.
3.Study 3 involved co-producing and testing organisational-level interventions which aimed to improve health programmes in two contact centre organisations (using workshops, focus groups and surveys with staff).

Results and discussion
Studies 1 and 2 generated evidence on the wider contact centre and workplace health intervention context. Study 3 built on this in order to co-produce and test organisation-specific interventions. Managers from each organisation decided on a problem and identified causal factors. They then co-produced a theory of change, a theory of action and an action plan which focused on addressing the causal factors to alleviate their problem. One organisation tested their action plan which resulted in positive outcomes (e.g., increased morale and productivity). Although the second organisation could not test theirs, it contributed to an internal wellbeing review.
The PhD generated new knowledge on how organisational culture impacts workplace health programmes, which was then applied to the real world by co-producing theoretically-grounded, evidence-based solutions with organisations.

Conclusion
This PhD presents evidence and possible solutions for how to develop and improve workplace health programmes in contact centres through the lens of organisational culture. It has several implications for policy, practice and research, all of which have the potential for application to other workplace settings.