Safe • Skilled • Ready Workforce Program

Integrating Work and Life

This program seeks to prepare all current and future workers for safe and healthy work. In the past, work risks have been considered separately from the risks of daily life. Because most adults spend more than a third of their waking hours at work, the on-the-job hazards they face have a great effect on their overall well-being. Problems at work can lead to risks in personal and community life, and conditions that affect people at home—stress, obesity, heart disease, depression, and others—spill over into work hours. This raises health-care costs, causes higher turnover, lowers productivity, and forces people to miss work more often.

Achieving Total Worker Health™

The NIOSH Total Worker Health™ program provides resources to integrate safety and worker protection programs with workplace health promotion interventions. The aim is to prevent injury/illness and to advance the overall health and well-being of workers.

If work or other activities reduce health, a worker's quality of life and future earnings can also decline. This, in turn, can harm those who depend on the worker. The opposite strategy provides significant opportunities for better health. Workplaces that protect employees from injury or illness and use their resources to improve workers' health help people become more vibrant, engaged, and productive in all areas of life. More businesses are looking at the social and economic advantages of combining efforts to protect worker safety with programs to promote health. The Safe–Skilled–Ready Workforce Program will help prepare everyone in the workforce—employee or employer—to be successful partners in these efforts.