How management groups’ reason when deciding to use a model focusing on systematic work environment management. Experiences from Swedish municipalities

• Published date: 21 November 2019
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-09-2018-0124
• Pages: 441-456
• Date: 21 November 2019
• Author: Therese Hellman,Fredrik Molin,Tomas Eriksson,Magnus Svartengren
• Subject Matter: Health & social care

How management groups’reason

when deciding to use a model

focusing on systematic work

environment management

Experiences from Swedish municipalities

Therese Hellman

Department of Medical Sciences, Occupational and Environmental Medicine,

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Fredrik Molin

Institute for Personnel and Corporate Development,

Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala, Sweden and

Department of Medical Sciences, Occupational and Environmental Medicine,

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and

Tomas Eriksson and Magnus Svartengren

Department of Medical Sciences, Occupational and Environmental Medicine,

Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the perspective of the management group

regarding how they reasoned when deciding to engage in a model focussing on systematic work environment

management, and what motives that influenced their decision.

Design/methodology/approach –This qualitative study with semi-structured interviews includes

18 representatives from the management groups in 18 Swedish municipalities. Data were analysed with a

constant comparative method.

Findings –The participants described two aspects that were of importance when making the decision;

establishing commitment before making the decision and establishing strategies to legitimise the decision.

Furthermore,they expressed motives that were linkedboth to their individual expectations and wishes and to

policies and facts in their organisations. The participants experienced the model as a valuable tool in their

organisationsto increase employee participationand to provide structured supportto their first-line managers.

Practical implications –The managers’motives were linked to individual expectations and external

directives. These were often intertwined and influenced their decisions. When implementing this type of

model, it is important to discuss decisions in a larger group to avoid building an organisational initiative on

one person’s expectations. Furthermore, it is important to support the management’s work to establish

commitment for the model in the municipal organisation.

Originality/value –This study adds to knowledge of the complexity of deciding and implementing models

to support systematic work environment management in organisations.

Keywords Employee participation, Leadership, Work environment

Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 12 No. 6, 2019

pp. 441-456

Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-09-2018-0124

Received 24 September 2018

Revised 26 March 2019

21 August 2019

Accepted 1 October 2019

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

www.emeraldinsight.com/1753-8351.htm

© Therese Hellman, Fredrik Molin, Tomas Eriksson and Magnus Svartengren. Published by Emerald

PublishingLimited. This article is publishedunder the CreativeCommons Attribution(CC BY 4.0) licence.

Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both

commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors.

The full terms of this licence may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

The authors gratefully acknowledge all the participants who took part in the interviews. This study

was financed by a grant from the AFA Insurance.

441

Experiences

from Swedish

municipalities

Background

Work-related illnessesand accidents are majorconcerns worldwideas they result in significant

consequences for both employees (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013) and

employers (ILO, 2012). In 1989, the Directive 89/391/EEC-OSH “Framework Directive”was

launched in order to introduce measuresto encourage improvements in the safety and health

of workers. This directive states that employers are requiredto assess risks to the safetyand

health ofworkers and to implementmeasures that aim toreduce the identifiedrisks (European

Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2002). National legislation regulating employee health

and safety at work varies across countries. In Sweden, the Swedish Work Environment

Authority has established extensive legal requirements for systematic work environment

management (Swedish Work Environment Authority, 2001) and the organisational and social

work environment (Swedish Work Environment A uthority, 2015). Both these provisions aim to

promote good work environment and prevent risks of ill health. The Swedish Work

Environment Authority (2001, p. 1) is m ore comprehensive and covers all aspects of the work

environment. It addresses employers’obligations to investigate, carry out, and follow-up on

activities insuch a way that ill health and accidents at work are prevented and a satisfactory

work environment is achieved. The latter ( Swedish Work Environment Authority, 2015, p. 4) is

more specificand addresses the organisational andsocial conditions in the workenvironment.

Although these provisions,including guidelines, areavailable, many organisations in Sweden

do not properly perform their systematic work environment management (Frick, 2014). This

lack of compliancemight be because the provisions are often experienced as time-consuming

and somewhat abstract (Svartengren et al., 2013) and that policy documents within the

organisations provide little practical guidance (Larsson et al., 2016).

Althoughprevious researchhas found that provisions and policies are importantincentives

influencing what actions are taken to ensure employee health and safety (Martinsson et al.,

2016; Miller and Haslam, 2009; Van Dongen et al., 2013), it is evident that these motives are not

enough. Interestingly, ithas also been indicated thatclear reasons and motivesare sometimes

lacking when deciding upon whether to engage or not in interventions focussing on work

environmentand health at the workplace. In addition, a managementgroup sometimes makes

decisions without understanding their implications. The decisions could be influenced by

chance, if a salesman made a sales call or they happened to have the financial resources

(Martinsson et al., 2016). Decisions made on such grounds seldom facilitate employee

participation and sustainability (Nielsen et al., 2010). However, when the motives are made

explicit, they seem to be related to the characteristics of the intervention itself with

requirements of an intervention that is easy tounderstand and adopt (Martinsson et al., 2016).

Previous research thus emphasise the importance of a manageable intervention in order to

create sustainable efforts focussing on work environment management. However, theprocess of

deciding whether to use an intervention or not might also influence the forthcoming efforts. One

study has, for example, showed that only making the decision on a higher management level

without any further commitment could rather hamper, than facilitate the implementation

process of an organisational intervention (van der Zijpp et al., 2016). A scoping review

highlighted a whole-system approach for sustainability and the importance of involving various

stakeholders and mangers at different organisational levels as well as collaborating in order to

promote implementation (Eriksson et al., 2017). However, even though collaboration and

power-sharing is called for, it is also known that higher managements/governments find it

difficult to change their way of working; thus they easily continue to act through the traditional

bureaucratic authority of command and control (Keast and Brown, 2007). This way of acting is

more linked to coordination, referring to the formal links of an organisation in order to reach

common objectives (Keast and Mandell, 2014). There is thus a difference in the meaning of the

concepts of coordination and collaboration, in which collaboration requires more than working

towards shared goals, namely, establishing a sense of trust and mutual dependence between

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