This document discusses organizational health and its importance for competitiveness. It defines organizational health as strategically integrating business, interpersonal, and individual needs to optimize overall human and organizational well-being. A healthy organization is described as being adaptive, innovative, flexible and resilient. The document introduces an organizational health scorecard developed by CCA that identifies critical elements of healthy organizations. It suggests HR professionals can use the scorecard to assess organizational strengths, weaknesses, and risks to identify areas for improvement. Future papers will examine how to build individual well-being competencies and integrate them into the organization.
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What’s Health Got to Do with It?
1. What’s Health Got to Do with It?
Improving Organizational Health
to Gain a Competitive Advantage
!
2. What’s Health Got to Do with It?
CCA, Inc. 2
Why does organizational health matter?
Health enables execution, facilitates adaptation, and reduces risk. This axiom applies to both
individuals and organizations. Healthy workers are more productive. “Healthy” organizations are
more successful. Intuitively, these statements resonate, and there is plenty of research to
support these contentions.
But, what does this mean to HR professionals? Does a healthy workforce create a healthy
organization or vice versa? Or like most organizational dynamics, are the two inextricably
linked? And, how do we measure the “health” of the organization?
What does “organizational health” look like?
CCA EVP, Tom Diamante, Ph.D., defines organizational health as:
The strategic integration of business, interpersonal, and individual needs
to optimize overall human and organizational well-being.1
The physical health of the workforce is just one of many components. Healthy organizations
also promote, encourage, and support the overall well-being, not just the physical health status,
of their workforce. The well-being of the workforce fuels the health of the organization;
organizational health reinforces workforce well-being.
In the organizational context, “healthy” encompasses a wide range of elements that add up to
an innovative, flexible, responsive, resilient organization that can respond to changing market
conditions, withstand adversity, and drive performance.
It’s simple:
Healthy organizations are adaptive.
Adaptive organizations are competitive.
Competitive organizations are successful.
The good news for HR is that healthy organizations manifest certain identifiable characteristics
and practices that can be evaluated. The relative significance of these elements vary by
organization, but the most successful enterprises demonstrate a baseline competency in every
area and excellence in specific areas that support their objectives.
Measuring organizational health
The first step in any improvement initiative is to establish a baseline. HR should assess the
current status of the organization’s health and identify any “unhealthy” areas: elements that fall
below an acceptable standard and, therefore, put the organization at risk.
To help HR evaluate the situation, CCA developed an
organizational health scorecard2
that identifies critical
elements of a healthy organization based on empirical
research. Published by Jossey-Bass, the scorecard
distills this research into evidence-based elements that
support the well-being of the organization itself.
HR professionals can use
CCA’s organizational health
scorecard to identify areas of
strength, weakness, and risk
3. What’s Health Got to Do with It?
CCA, Inc. 3
HR professionals can use the scorecard to open an organizational health dialogue with
leadership. It offers the HR team a tool to assess the organization: identify areas of strength,
weakness, and risk; and present these findings to leadership in a digestible form.
While many of the criteria in the scorecard represent
essential elements for any healthy organization, certain
elements must be customized to reflect the organization’s
competitive landscape and specific challenges. In a simple
example, the critical Environment & Safety elements will look
significantly different for a manufacturing firm than for a
professional services firm. Even within the organization,
certain departments, teams, or locations may require that
the scorecard be adjusted.
HR’s challenge is to determine whether the critical elements
exist and to what degree they are embedded in the
organization, and then identify where they are done well and where they need to be
strengthened or introduced. HR can start by assessing the overall situation and then roll out the
scorecard to various segments of the organization to create a roadmap identifying areas that
require improvement.
Over the next few months, CCA will release a series of papers to help HR professionals use the
scorecard. The series will examine the critical elements by category, taking an in-depth,
practical look at how they manifest in a healthy environment. This approach allows the HR team
to compare their organization’s current condition to a representative optimal state and identify
and prioritize areas of risk, opportunities for improvement, and areas of excellence. The series
will also discuss how to build and measure individual well-being competencies within the
workforce and integrate these competencies into the developmental framework of the
organization.
Taking the next step to organizational health
What can HR do today to promote organizational well-being?
About CCA
Since 1984, CCA has been helping organizations improve performance by promoting human
development and enhancing individual and organizational well-being. As a premium HR consultant and
EAP provider, we provide support to management, HR, and employees through our counseling, training
and development programs, executive coaching, and consulting services.
For more information, visit ccainc.com.
1
Diamante, T., Natale, S., & London, M. (2006). Organizational Wellness. In Sheinfeld-Gorin, S. & Arnold, J. (Eds.),
Health Promotion Practices in Industry. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
2
Ibid, 485.
The scorecard explores
seven (7) categories:
• Culture
• Workforce Development
• Management Practices
• Environment and Safety
• Leadership
• Communication
• Work Itself
Contact CCA at 212.686.6827 or cca@ccainc.com
to receive a complimentary organizational health consultation.