Abstract
Objectives: We described the concept of advocacy at the enterprise (i.e., organizational) level from the practitioner's perspective, taking the implementation of occupational health activities within an enterprise as an example. More specifically, we clarified how factors related to international academic societies and findings from specific health screenings and guidance (which are state measures) are applied to the advocacy of healthy companies and healthy management through occupational health activities.
Content: Participation in the International Union for Health Promotion and Education or other conferences or cooperation with policy-oriented occupational health and safety measures (e.g., specific health screenings and guidance or stress checks) are seemingly unconnected to occupational activities in actual settings. But we demonstrated these experiences provide considerable insight and relevant knowledge in actual settings from the perspective of “think globally, act locally.” To successfully integrate these findings and put them into practice, it is important to constantly consider the best occupational health activities that can be implemented in one's work domain and to set workplace health goals. In this article, we examined advocacy at the enterprise level by presenting cases of workplace health promotion (WHP) based on needs assessment and development of healthy companies involving management and labor unions.
Conclusion: Based on the practice of two cases, it was revealed that time and effort are required to persuade key persons including management to comply with the transformation of the enterprise or organization. To reach this goal, it was necessary to “look for the key persons and form a group to engage in WHP together in good faith, stably, on the basis of evidence as much as possible, and taking the position of other parties into consideration.” Advocacy is not separate from daily occupational health activities; rather, it is an extension of such activities.
