Workplace Health Assessment
Healthy Workplace Inventory
Inspired by Clark's Healthy Workplace Inventory
Rate 20 aspects of your workplace to get a clear picture of its overall health, with scores across 5 specific areas.
What you will learn
This is a research-inspired adaptation aligned with Clark's published workplace health domains. It is not the official Clark Healthy Work Environment Inventory (CHWEI). Learn more
1. People here share a clear purpose, and day-to-day behavior generally aligns with it.
2. I can generally trust leaders and coworkers here to act in good faith.
3. Important information is shared openly, and people communicate respectfully, even under pressure.
4. Staff are treated as valuable contributors, not interchangeable resources.
5. Good work is recognized in a way that feels fair across roles and teams.
6. Most people on my team seem engaged and reasonably positive about working here.
7. This organization regularly checks how the culture is working and follows through on improvements.
8. Employees have real input into decisions that affect their work (not just 'feedback theater').
9. Cooperation across roles and teams is the norm, and problems are solved together.
10. New or developing staff can access mentoring or coaching when they need it.
11. Taking breaks, recovery, and basic self-care are treated as legitimate, not punished.
12. The organization supports learning (training, time, tools) that helps people do their jobs well.
13. People are treated with dignity in everyday interactions (including when mistakes happen).
14. Work demands are usually sustainable, and workload is shared in a reasonable way.
15. Conflict is handled directly and professionally rather than avoided, escalated, or personalized.
16. It feels safe to raise concerns or disagree respectfully with someone higher in status.
17. Pay, benefits, and other rewards feel broadly fair for the work people do.
18. There are realistic paths for growth or advancement for people who want it.
19. The organization generally keeps high-performing staff and can attract strong candidates.
20. If a friend asked, I would be comfortable recommending this as a good place to work.
Your 5 areas
These are interpretive groupings, not validated subscales. They show where your workplace is strongest and where it may need attention.
Areas that scored lowest
What you can try this week
Reference bands
Score ranges are our own interpretive guidelines, informed by workplace health research.
About the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory
The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory measures how healthy a workplace feels from the inside. It covers organizational culture, civility, communication, fairness, support, and practical working conditions like workload and growth opportunities.
It does not diagnose mental health conditions. It does not audit HR policies. It captures one thing: your perception of how well your workplace functions as a place where people can do good work and be treated well.
Five areas of workplace health
This assessment covers 20 statements grouped into 5 areas (4 statements each).
Shared mission, engagement, and whether the organization actively improves its own culture.
Good faith between people, respectful communication, dignity, and feeling safe to speak up.
Real input into decisions, cross-team cooperation, fair recognition, and constructive conflict handling.
Access to mentoring, learning opportunities, growth paths, and space for recovery.
Sustainable workload, fair compensation, talent retention, and whether you would recommend the workplace.
Development Study
"It may be completed either as an individual exercise or by all members of a team to compare perceptions..."
Sattler, V. P., Barbosa-Leiker, C., & Clark, C. M. (2016). Development and Testing of the Healthy Work Environment Inventory. Journal of Nursing Education, 55(10), 555-562.
Original Context
"I have developed a workplace inventory...to raise awareness, assess the perceived health of an organization, and determine strengths..."
Clark, C. M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a more civil workplace. American Nurse Today, 10(11).
Psychometric Evidence
A 2020 systematic review of work environment instruments reported the Clark/Sattler inventory's internal consistency as Cronbach's α = 0.94, with EFA factor loadings in the range 0.79 to 0.47. The development sample included 520 participants.
Maassen, S. M. et al. (2020). Psychometric evaluation of instruments measuring the work environment of healthcare professionals in hospitals. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 32(8), 545-557.
How we built this version
The official Clark Healthy Work Environment Inventory is a copyrighted instrument that requires written permission for use. We built a research-inspired alternative that covers the same conceptual areas without reproducing the original item wording.
Here is what we did:
- Mapped the 20 topic areas visible in the published inventory (mission, trust, communication, engagement, etc.) and wrote original statements covering each one.
- Kept the same response structure: 5-point scale, 20 items, sum scoring (range 20 to 100). No reverse-scored items.
- Added a 3-month time window ("Think about your workplace over the last 3 months") to improve consistency in an online setting. The original prompt is more general.
- Adapted our own score bands (88-100 Very healthy through <40 Very unhealthy), informed by the general range used in workplace health research. These are interpretive guidelines, not equivalent to published norms.
- Grouped items into 5 interpretive areas based on content overlap with the AACN Healthy Work Environment standards and NIOSH workplace health frameworks. These are not validated subscales.
This version has not been validated against the licensed CHWEI. Scores are indicative. If you need the official instrument, contact Boise State University for licensing information.
Frameworks that shaped our adaptation
How this compares to related assessments
The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory looks at overall workplace health. Other assessments zoom in on specific parts of the work experience. If a particular area scored low, one of these may help you understand it better.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The official Clark Healthy Work Environment Inventory (CHWEI) was developed by Cynthia M. Clark as part of her research on civility in nursing and workplace environments. Our assessment is independently written, inspired by the workplace health domains Clark identified in her published research. We use original item wording and are not affiliated with Dr. Clark.
Clark's workplace health framework emerged from her extensive research on incivility in healthcare and education settings. Key publications include Creating and Sustaining Civility in Nursing Education (2013) and her work on workplace culture assessment. The framework identifies five domains of workplace health: organizational culture, trust, collaboration, support systems, and work design.
Focus on the lowest-scoring domain first. Research shows that workplace culture improvements are most effective when they target specific areas: strengthening psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999), improving communication practices, and building trust through consistent leadership behavior. If your team scored low on psychological safety, try our Team Psychological Safety assessment for more specific insights.
About this tool
This is a research-inspired workplace health assessment built by the team at Coached. It is based on the conceptual framework published by Cynthia M. Clark but uses original item wording and is not the official Clark Healthy Work Environment Inventory (CHWEI).