La Isla Network (LIN) has released a new case study demonstrating how the application of organizational psychology dramatically improved workplace safety and productivity at the Ingenio San Antonio (ISA) sugar mill in Nicaragua.
Under LIN’s Adelante Center of Excellence and PREP project, a comprehensive Rest-Shade-Hydration (RSH) intervention addressed severe heat stress among sugarcane workers, which previously contributed to high rates of kidney injury, heat-related illness and chronic kidney disease.
After implementing the RSH intervention, LIN embarked on a Management of Change (MoC) strategy, ensuring that ISA’s workplace culture worked in harmony with the newly-implemented RSH policies.
Integrating organizational psychology within their MoC strategy, La Isla Network significantly reshaped ISA’s workplace culture.
From the assessment of the mill’s particular gaps and opportunities for improvement, the strategy emphasized clear communication of health and safety metrics alongside productivity targets. It also embedded these metrics into supervisor performance evaluations, ensuring accountability and consistent implementation.
This targeted approach helped achieve the intervention’s striking outcomes, including more than an 80% reduction in heat-related illnesses, a 70% decrease in kidney injury risks, up to a 20% increase in worker productivity, and a 60% ROI by year three with profitability of the intervention by year two.
La Isla Network believes this model can be effectively replicated in other industries and organizations facing the need to improve occupational heat stress mitigation, offering a practical and company-tailored roadmap for businesses committed to safeguarding worker health while maintaining or even improving operational efficiency.
Felipe Pacheco Zenteno, La Isla Network Lead Organizational Psychologist, said, “Assessing particular environmental, hygiene, and physiological conditions is essential for designing adequate OSH protocols that will safeguard workers’ health. Yet, as experience shows, the gap between prescribed policy and actual day-to-day implementation is largely determined by human factors and workplace culture, which can often dictate the success or failure of improvement efforts. Integrating an organizational psychology perspective allows businesses to anticipate and bridge possible gaps between technical requirements and the cultural realities that shape daily practice. By understanding organizational and workgroup factors related to safety, how change can actually occur within specific, real-world settings, and by involving the different actors across organizational hierarchies in the intervention processes, we can ensure that the need for OSH improvements is not only recognized, but truly embedded in everyday work practices.”
Please read and download the case study below:
La Isla Network es una organización de investigación y asesoramiento en salud dedicada a erradicar las lesiones, enfermedades y muertes relacionadas con el calor entre los trabajadores de todo el mundo. Desarrollamos intervenciones de protección laboral basadas en datos y gestionamos el cambio, mejorando la resiliencia de las fuerzas de trabajo y las empresas ante la exposición al calor. LIN impulsa un cambio duradero colaborando con gobiernos e instituciones multilaterales para informar y crear políticas. Para más información, utilice nuestro Formulario de contacto.
