International projects
WELLy: Introducing the job profile of a Manager for Work Well-being to prevent and combat work-related stress
Researchers (1)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
32165 |
PhD Annmarie Gorenc Zoran |
Administrative and organisational sciences |
Head |
2019 - 2022 |
234 |
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Context: According to the English Institute of Health Equity (UCL, Workplace interventions to improve health and wellbeing, 2014) both physical and psychosocial work environments can affect health. Over the last decade, the literature exploring link between management behaviour and employee well-being has grown dramatically and the consistent message is that the way employees are managed is a key determinant of their health and well-being (Skakon et al 2010, Kelloway and Barling 2010). For this reason, it’s necessary mapping competencies that a manager should own to be able to implement a correct approach for preventing and reducing stress at work. This is what the WELLy project will do and, once the management competencies needed for engendering employee engagement, health and well-being will be identified, the challenge becomes supporting managers to develop the competencies and use them in their people management approach.
Objectives: Given the exponential increase of work-related stress issues and the diffusion of depression among the European citizens, the WELLy project aims to set the role of Work Well-being Manager (WWM) in charge of making sure that daily working conditions are fair and as healthy as reasonably possible for every employee so that the overall quality of life at work improves within the organisation and across economies.
Participants: At least 3 SMEs per pilot country (Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal), with their employers and employees, will be involved. Direct participants will be the learners of the pilot training courses. SMEs will be involved with 1 participant each, choosing the employee/manager that is in charge of Human Resources management. Other participants that will be indirectly involved are employees working in the pilot SMEs as they will benefit from the introduction of the Work Well-being Manager professional figure in the workplace.
Activities: As starting point an Analysis of the State of the Art in partners' countries, EU and USA will be carried out and will lead to a summary of literature and collection of case studies of companies that applied tools and rules to manage and guarantee the organizational well-being. Also an empirical research will be conducted to gather data directly from the companies (employers and employees) and associations for the protection of workers' rights (IO1). These data will represent the conceptual basis for the definition of the WWM professional profile and the related Training Curriculum and Course (IO2-IO3), leading to its recognition at EU level (IO4), and the development of a Manual with the optimal Toolkit for the implementation of measures to prevent and combat work-related stress (IO5).
Methodology: Project activities will be implemented following a 3-step methodology.
1) RESEARCH: First phase will start with Analysis of the State of the Art and will also define indicators to collect to evaluate the impact of introduction of the WWM in companies. Matching between experimental data and literature data will lead to the definition of the Work Well-being Manager professional profile and Training Curriculum. Main competences that this Manager should have and/or acquire through a training course will be defined in order to build a new professional specification and develop a common training model, learning contents and training materials. Building on results of the initial literature research, indicators collected from the enterprises and public information, an evaluation model will be developed to assess costs and benefits of introducing a WWM.
2) PILOTING: Following step will be the experimentation through pilot tests of the Work Well-being Managers training course into the partners’ countries and evaluation of the impact.
Validation of WWM in pilot companies will be conducted through the introduction of the Work Well-being Manager in 3 pilot companies per country. Monitoring of achieved results will be conducted through comparison betw
