Developing Compassionate Workplaces in Europe for the digital work environment and new ways of working to protect workers’ mental health and wellbeing when faced with serious illness, family caregiving, death, dying and loss
A transdisciplinary, cross-national research project to create “compassionate workplaces” for changing work environments (e.g. teleworkers, hybrid workers, workers with extensively digitalized HR-services). These workplaces are supportive for experiences of serious illness, family caregiving, death, dying and loss and its impact on worker mental health and wellbeing. Through a cross-national mixed-methods study the project will describe the exposure to the psychosocial risks inherent in new ways of working, their impact on worker mental health outcomes in the work context and evaluate how “compassionate workplaces” might mitigate these effects.
Based on these findings and building on existing programs, the project will develop and evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of tailored compassionate workplace programs for different work environments.
A substantial proportion of workers will, in any given year, experience serious illness, caregiving tasks, dying and loss. This affects both these workers directly and their colleagues indirectly. The New ways of working hold important opportunities and challenges for coping with these experiences, e.g. increased schedule-control and autonomy might facilitate family-caregiving, yet strong social isolation might also be expected and hinder social support from co-workers. Our suggested “compassionate workplaces” program helps to facilitate a work environment that protects and improves the mental health of workers. Positive outcomes can be expected both for workers specifically having these experiences but also for all other workers who will feel more respected in a compassionate working culture. Compassionate Workplace Programs have demonstrated a promising potential in this respect and can provide a guidance for workplaces to be optimally supportive. However, adaptation to European working contexts and to different changing working environments is warranted.
A consortium of six established research teams and (number tbd) workplace advocacy and policy groups across seven countries. The consortium brings together expertise in health care science, nursing, labor sociology, work and organizational psychology, public health, compassionate communities and palliative and end-of-life care. Moreover, the consortium is experienced in performing large workplace studies and trials, economic evaluations, , and developing societal and economic valorisation, and mental health and wellbeing support initiatives in the workplace.
Duration | 01.01.2024 - 31.12.2028 |
Funding | European Commission |
Grant amount | 692.643,75 |
Unit | |
Profile area Uni Graz | |
Principal investigator | Assoz. Prof. Mag.rer.soc.oec. Dr.phil. Klaus Jürgen Wegleitner |
Project staff | Hadler, Markus, Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.rer.soc.oec |
Project homepage |
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