Mission

The mission of the Workplace Health, Behaviour, and Performance Research Unit (WHBP) is to be the leading multi-stakeholder, in Barbados and the wider Caribbean, in workplace health, behaviour and performance.  Moreover, the Research Unit is a centre of excellence for applied research aimed at advancing both employee and organisational health. At the core of the Research Unit’s activities is promoting positive links between work and health. The Research Unit through research and the exchange of information among practitioners, and professionals in both public and private sectors aims to improve workplace health, behaviour, and performance in the Caribbean. In addition, the Research Unit turns research into practical applications and informs governmental and organisational policy and practice in the Caribbean, thus fostering healthy work organisations that will be sustainable and competitive. Specifically, research areas include but are not limited to:

• The interplay between workplace health, employee attitude and behaviours, and organisational outcomes;
• Development of  a taxonomy of employee job performance;
• Development and validation of work-based psychometric scales and measures;
• Models required to develop a healthy work organisation in Barbados and the Caribbean;
• Individual health – primary prevention, preventative behaviour and behaviour modification, attitudes and life style change, health education, health promotion, and how to motivate employees
• Safety legislation and occupational health – how effective policies are, and the level of compliance;
• Individual differences and individual health,
• Health and safety factors related to workplace functioning;
• Exploring organisational factors that influence the work-health relationship and support work-life balance;
• Healthy workplace culture – management practices, polices, and procedures, job design, communication systems, workplace climate, organisational effectiveness, human resource management practices and policies, employee work adjustment, employee engagement, work-life balance, and the effect on employee health, morale, and well-being;
• Healthy leadership;
• Measuring and evaluating employee engagement;
• Corporate social responsibility related to health, performance and productivity
• Development of cross-cultural workplace assessment tools
• The role of physical and psychological well-being, and emotional health in employee performance;
• Economic costs of work stress,  absenteeism,  and presenteeism;
• Corporate social responsibility related to health, performance and productivity;
• Workplace Health Protection and Promotion – systematic integration of workplace health protection and health promotion interventions, workplace health protection interventions, integrative or multi-level health promotion as well as evaluating the return on investment (ROI) of workplace health care and promotion interventions.

 

Objectives

There are several objectives associated with the Workplace Health, Behaviour, and Performance Research Unit:

• To be a leading international research unit for work and health.
• To focus on the development of healthy work organisations within Barbados and the wider Caribbean.
• To adopt an integrative multidisciplinary approach to research on the relationships between work environments and employee health.
• To improve organisational health, occupational health, safety and personal wellbeing of employees through research that integrates investigations of workplace health, behaviour and performance.
• To conduct investigative and evaluative research on workplace health, behaviour, performance and productivity within both public and private sector contexts.
• To develop and refine a model of the Healthy Work Organisation using global bench marks that is relevant to the Caribbean context.
• To create an agenda and produce quality research outputs that addresses workplace health, behaviour and performance in the Caribbean.
• To produce quality research that is published in top rated international journals on workplace behaviour, work stress, performance, and health promotion.
• To inform organisational practice by developing relevant organisational interventions based on applied research geared towards improving workplace health, behaviour and performance.
• Encourage organisations to carry out annual employee health surveys
• To promote investment in the employee health care, and to evaluate the effects of investment in employee health care.

 
Principals:
Dr. Dion Greenidge
Dr. Cheryl Cadogan-McClean