Validation and field tests of an organizational readiness toolkit for pre-implementation assessment and continuous improvement of participatory programs to advance occupational safety, health, and wellbeing

BackgroundOrganizational readiness for change is a known prerequisite for intervention success but there is no gold standard for assessing this, necessitating a tailored instrument for the intervention at hand. At present, practitioners and researchers alike lack practical means to assess and build organizational readiness for participatory programs to advance worker health, safety, and wellbeing.ObjectiveValidate and field test a toolkit to assess organizational readiness with supporting materials designed to provide key findings along with tools to guide program implementation.MethodsTwo waves of survey data were collected online through a Qualtrics Panel™ to psychometrically validate two shorter versions of an instrument developed previously. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to assess construct validity for each dataset collected. Subject matter experts (SMEs) wrote accompanying support materials to guide organizations in interpreting survey findings and for using internal resources to address identified shortcomings. The toolkit was reviewed by two working occupational safety and health professionals, and then field tested with small samples of employees from two organizations in different job sectors.ResultsTwo new survey instruments, 24 and 7 items in length, were psychometrically validated; supporting materials were updated following field tests based on practitioner recommendations.ConclusionsThe Organizational Readiness Toolkit (ORT) consists of surveys and a suite of tools that can assist organizations in the implementation of a participatory health, safety and wellbeing program by first assessing readiness for change and then by providing guidance that is tailored to the organization on how to build the necessary readiness for successful program implementation.