**Author details**

Stakeholders in the middle of the power/interest matrix with relatively high power and interest should be encouraged for a solid and continuous support of the work and activities undertaken. These stakeholders can be valuable resources and also provide required support to

The most important stakeholders, who are crucial to the success of any strategic development in occupational health care, are the ones with high power and with high interest. These might also be stakeholders, whose opinions and views need to be discussed and elaborated, as their

One recommended method in occupational health care development is to utilize steering groups, which should include key stakeholders, and thus also include key agents for the work to be planned and undertaken. A comprehensive study of organization-level occupational health interventions concluded that the use of steering groups for projects was unanimously

Another recommended method is having for occupational health care clearly an owner within an organization, who also keeps up the communication with selected stakeholders. It is counterproductive to involve the stakeholders at the start of an activity and after that leave them out of the communication loop. Many studies confirm that active communication with different parties is an essential success factor for occupational health care activities (see e.g. [34]).

Furthermore, it should be noted that the level and intensity for participation to the work and development of occupational health care within one stakeholder group may vary significantly. For instance, all the individuals within an organization might not share the same ambitions and do not assess the value of workplace health promotion in a similar manner. Thus when developing strategies for stakeholder participation, it is also important to understand that the range of

Occupational health care today consists of the combined efforts of employers, employees and other stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of people at work. This conceptual development has meant that the number of stakeholders in occupational health care is increasing. Modern successful occupational health care requires multifaceted collaboration,

An essential element in occupational health care is well-structured work with various stakeholders. The work with stakeholders starts with stakeholder analysis. It aims to evaluate and understand stakeholders from the perspective of an organization. The first step is to identify the essential stakeholders of occupational health care in an organization. The stakeholders can be classified as internal, intermediate and external stakeholders. The most important internal stakeholders are the individual employees working in an organization; other internal stakeholders are peer employees and various managers (senior managers, line managers, HR managers) of an organization. Interface stakeholders include occupational health service

participation can be wide from passive participation to self-directed activities and work.

plan and initiate new ideas.

38 Occupational Health

views can also differ and vary.

**6. Summary**

recommended by different developers [34].

partnerships and alliances between various actors.

Ari-Matti Auvinen

Address all correspondence to: ama.auvinen@aalto.fi

HEMA Institute, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Human Capital Investment Oy, Helsinki, Finland
