“Does anyone know? Can you get any help?” Experiences from an ambassador-facilitated health programme: insights from a qualitative study

• Date: 03 July 2023
• Pages: 281-293
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-10-2022-0158
• Published date: 03 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management,HR & organizational behaviour,Human resource policy,Employee welfare
• Author: Charlotte Brøgger Bond,Mette Jensen Stochkendahl,Karen Søgaard,Lotte Nygaard Andersen

“Does anyone know? Can you get

any help?”Experiences from

an ambassador-facilitated health

programme: insights from

a qualitative study

Charlotte Brøgger Bond

Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics,

Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Mette Jensen Stochkendahl

Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics,

Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark and

Chiropractic Knowledge Hub, Odense, Denmark, and

Karen Søgaard and Lotte Nygaard Andersen

Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics,

Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Abstract

Purpose –Health ambassadors are co-workers assigned to facilitate healthy choices amongst the

ambassadors’’ colleagues and are increasingly used in workplace health promotion. In a municipality in the

southern region of Denmark, occupational health and safety (OHS) representatives were appointed as health

ambassadors to facilitate the development of healthy lifestyle initiatives at the ambassadors’workplace and

the uptake of various health offers from the municipality’s workplace health programme amongst the

ambassadors’colleagues. The aim of this study was to understand how employees and managers from the

municipality experienced the health ambassador-facilitated implementation of the health programme.

Design/methodology/approach –The study was designed as an interview study with (n513) semi-

structured interviews. Using purposeful sampling, the authors invited participants who held different

positions (e.g. managers and regular employees) on two different work teams in the municipality. The work

teams (a construction team and a healthcare team) differed in gender profile and work tasksbut were both

categorised as physically heavy work. Malterud’s systematic text condensation was used to devise the

strategy for the analysis.

Findings –The authors’findings show that the employees considered health a private matter that the

workplace should not interfere with, and this challenged the implementation of the health programme.

Secondly, the health ambassadors were not properly trained to facilitate health initiatives amongst the

ambassadors’colleagues; instead, the managers were the driving force in the implementation of health

initiatives.

Ambassador-

facilitated

health

programme

281

The authors thank the municipality for enabling to perform this study and specially thank the

participants in this study for the participants’time and contributions.

Funding: No funding has been received.

Ethical approval: Informed consent was obtained from all participants in written format. The

participants were informed that the interviews were being audiotaped and it was possible to withdraw

their consent at any time. All names of participants and the work teams have been anonymised. The

study does not fall within the scope of the Medical Research Involving Human Subject Act (x14) and is,

therefore, regarded as exempt from ethical approval by the Regional Committees on Health Research

Ethics for Southern Denmark.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1753-8351.htm

Received 7 October 2022

Revised 10 May 2023

Accepted 12 June 2023

InternationalJournal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 16 No. 4, 2023

pp. 281-293

© Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-10-2022-0158