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Dr. Graham Lowe

It's virtually impossible to examine the impact of healthy workplaces on Canadians and the economy without coming across contributions from Dr. Graham Lowe, President of the Graham Lowe Group Inc., a workplace consulting and research firm.

One of the early leaders in Canada's Healthy Workplace Movement, Dr. Lowe is a strong believer in the principle that the quality of work environments matters for employee well-being, organizational performance and sustainable economic prosperity.

Recipient of the 2004 Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award, Dr. Lowe has published extensively on work environment, job quality and labour market issues.

His 2005 article in Health Care Quarterly, "Raising the Bar for People Practices: Helping all health organizations become 'preferred employers'", grew out of a background paper he presented at a multi-stakeholder workshop, sponsored by the Canadian College of Health Service Executives, which laid the ground work for the Collaborative.

Given Dr. Lowe's experience as a professor of sociology for over 25 years, it's perhaps no surprise that he's passionate about promoting the notion that creating a truly healthy workforce requires more than ?a program', it depends on using the best available evidence to guide transformations in organizational cultures, systems and practices.

"Health must be embedded in business operations as a strategic goal, and healthcare workplaces are no exception," explains Dr. Lowe. "A healthy culture is the next big step beyond workplace health promotion and wellness programs, but an essential step for healthcare employees and managers committed to improving both the quality of worklife and health system performance."

In fact, Dr. Lowe points out, the caring mission and humanistic values of the healthcare sector should give it an advantage over other industries when it comes to linking employee wellbeing to service excellence. Healthcare leaders ? and change agents on the front-lines of the system ? need to collectively leverage these unique attributes to achieve total quality: in jobs, work environments, employee worklife, organizational performance, and patient or client outcomes.

Dr. Lowe's expertise is highly sought-after. He has provided policy advice to governments, served on Statistics Canada committees, and is a member of the Institute for Work & Health's Scientific Advisory Committee. He has extensive consulting experience for clients ranging from Health Canada and RCMP Forensic Lab Services to Manulife Financial, Teck Cominco and the European Network of Employers for Health.

In the health sector, he has worked on a wide range of policy, strategy and research projects with organizations at the national, provincial and local levels.

It's no wonder that organizations look to Dr. Lowe for advice on creating the optimal work environment. He's given hundreds of talks and workshops on creating higher quality and more productive workplaces to audiences in Canada, Europe and Asia and in 2005 he and his business partner launched Great Place to Work® Institute Canada (GPTW), which specializes in building high-trust cultures.

Dr. Lowe also is a research associate at Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN), a national social policy think-tank, which recently published his report 21st Century Job Quality: Achieving What Canadians Want.

"As a researcher, I know the importance of taking the next step to turn evidence into action," says Dr. Lowe. "The Quality Worklife-Quality Healthcare Collaborative is Canada's best opportunity to do just that by acting on all the evidence that healthy healthcare workplaces benefit healthcare workers, patients and society."

"The work of the Quality Worklife-Quality Healthcare Collaborative is a call to action for a shift in leadership thinking and organizational culture so that human assets are highly valued," Dr. Lowe stresses.

"Healthy employees in healthy workplaces are the foundation for healthcare system renewal."