Interfaces of occupational health management and corporate social responsibility: a multi-centre qualitative study from Germany.

BACKGROUND: The workplace has been identified as a priority setting for health promotion. There are potential advantages of systematically integrating Occupational Health Management (OHM) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, OHM and CSR are usually overseen by different management branches with different sets of values, and there is a lack of empirical research regarding interfaces between OHM and CSR. Germany offers a particularly useful setting due to legislation requiring health to be promoted in the workplace. This study aims to examine key stakeholders' views and experiences regarding interfaces between OHM and CSR in German companies. METHODS: Individual semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 77 German stakeholders from three different groups: experts in occupational health and corporate social responsibility from various companies (n = 35), business partners (n = 19), and various non-business partners (n = 23). Transcripts were analysed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Participants identified several areas in which OHM and CSR are already interacting at strategic, structural and cultural levels, but also highlighted several barriers that undermine a more meaningful interaction. Participants reported difficulties in articulating the underlying ethical values relevant to both OHM and CSR at the strategic level. Several structural barriers were also highlighted, including a lack of resources (both financial and knowledge), and OHM and CSR departments not being fully developed or undertaken at entirely different operational levels. Finally, the missing practical implementation of corporate philosophy was identified as a critical cultural barrier to interfaces between OHM and CSR, with existing guidelines and companies' philosophies that already connect OHM and CSR not being embraced by employees and managers. CONCLUSIONS: There is already significant overlap in the focus of OHM and CSR, at the structural, strategic and cultural levels in many German companies. The potential is there, both in theory and practice, for the systematic combination of OHM and CSR. The insights from this study will be useful to ensure that closer integration between both management branches is set up in a socially sustainable and ethical manner.

[Informed Employees - Informed Consent as Ethical Guidance for Behavioural Prevention in the Corporate Context]. / Aufgeklärte Mitarbeiter/innen ­ Die informierte Einwilligung als ethische Orientierung für Verhaltensprävention im betrieblichen Kontext.

BACKGROUND AND METHOD: People have a right to physical and mental integrity in all spheres of life. They also have the right to autonomous actions and informed decisions regarding their health. To ensure this, informed consent has been the ethico-legal gold standard in medicine for some years now. The registration for measures of behavioural prevention, in contrast, is mainly conducted through forms focussing on data protection, with little attention to full informed consent of future participants. In this article, we discuss the ethical challenges that arise when employees consent to health-promoting measures. We then examine whether the instrument of informed consent can be translated to the context of behavioural prevention. RESULTS: Informed consent can be transferred to the corporate context in an altered version. Of particular importance is not only the handling of health-related data, but also the appropriate disclosure of all essential information as well as voluntary participation. CONCLUSIONS: The adjusted version of informed consent in behavioural prevention ought to be developed further, resulting in a matrix of criteria that define conditions under which the informed consent can be applied to single measures of behavioural prevention.