Health Circles — A Hospital’s Evidence-Based Solution for Better Employee Health and Performance

Health Circles is a structured process in which employees hold facilitated meetings over a course of time to identify what’s holding their health back and what can be done to improve it – with an emphasis on job design and the psychosocial health risks at the workplace.

This excerpt from a webinar (hosted by Lumity) describes a multi-year, controlled study of hospital nurses and aides at a hospital in Canada. They used an intervention based on Health Circles. Three years later, the caregivers in the health circles group reported

• improved demands, autonomy, social support
• improvement in work quality,
• less burnout
• fewer sleep disorders
• less psychological distress (symptoms of depression, anxiety, burnout, aggressiveness, and cognitive problems).

A control group got worse on most of the health measures.

• Read the scientific review that found “health circles have a favorable effect on workers’ health, well-being, and sickness absence.”
• Read a brief summary of the Health Circles process from Europe’s PRIMA-EF Consortium.