Linking health initiatives to the psychosocial environment: a multilevel latent profile analysis

The objective Workplace health promotion initiatives (WHPIs) play a critical role in preventing work-related stress (WRS) issues and promoting well-being. WHPIs can focus on individuals (e.g., promoting healthy behaviors, addressing unhealthy habits) or organizations (e.g., improving workplace structures and processes). While their benefits for employees are well-documented, their influence on the overall psychosocial work environment remains less understood. Our study aims to address this gap by examining whether WHPIs influence the quality of psychosocial work environments in organizations, seeking to provide empirical support for the "healthy employees, healthy workplaces" paradigm. In specific, our aims are to: a) identify distinct employee-level profiles of psychosocial risks; b) determine organization-level profiles by analyzing the distribution of these employee profiles across different organizations; and c) explore the association between several supervisor-rated WHPIs and these organization-level profiles. Methods Multilevel and multisource data were collected from a matched sample of 3,049 employees and 113 supervisors, nested within 113 distinct organizations. Employees completed a questionnaire designed to collect information on psychosocial risks, along with background characteristics and health indicators. Simultaneously, supervisors provided data on the WHPIs implemented in their organizations through a structured checklist. Results In phase one, employee-level latent profile analysis identified three distinct psychosocial risk patterns: “low WRS risk”, “average WRS risk”, and “high WRS risk”. These profiles were differently associated with various background characteristics and health indicators. In phase two, we expanded the analysis to the organization-level to define organizational profiles based on the prevalence of the three employee-level risk profiles within each organization. Three organization-level profiles emerged: "healthy workplaces," "average workplaces," and "unhealthy workplaces". Multilevel regression analysis revealed that WHPIs were positively associated with the 'healthy workplaces' profile. Conclusions Our findings underscore the importance of WHPIs in fostering healthier organizations, highlighting their potential to protect employee well-being and mitigate psychosocial risks.