Workplace Health Promotion and Wellbeing
1National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, Denmark
2VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
3University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, USA
4Work Research Centre, Dublin, Ireland
5Lund University, Lund, Sweden
6Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research - TNO, Delft, Netherlands
Workplace Health Promotion and Wellbeing
Description
A long, healthy, safe, and productive working life is the essence of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work’s goal for employees in a modern and sustainable workplace. The goal may be obtained by ensuring the employees’ wellbeing at workplaces through improvement of the working environment and through different types of health promotion at the workplace. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes the workplace as a priority setting for promotion of health and wellbeing. Workplace health promotion is the combined efforts of employers, employees, and society to improve the health and wellbeing of workers. However, many barriers may still exist for successfully implementing health promotion and wellbeing initiatives at the workplaces. For instance, small enterprises may not have the same infrastructure to support health promotion as larger companies. Some companies may lack time or knowledge to initiate and sustain health promotion. Furthermore, socioeconomic factors may influence participation in and outcomes of health promotion at the workplace. Research is still needed on how to best implement and evaluate health promotion and wellbeing initiatives in different settings and for different groups of workers.
We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as review articles on workplace health promotion and wellbeing. Prospective cohort studies, randomized controlled trials, cross-sectional studies, and qualitative studies, as well as other types of studies, are welcomed.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Workplace interventions with wellbeing and health promotion (e.g., physical exercise, smoking cessation, and diet)
- Socioeconomic differences in participation and/or in outcomes
- Motivation and barriers for health promotion at the workplace
- The interplay between work environment and wellbeing at work (e.g., physical factors, psychosocial factors, and safety at work)
- Positive psychology and wellbeing at work
- The role of leadership and management in wellbeing at work
- Demographic changes and wellbeing at work (e.g., ageing workforces and lifestyle-related changes)
- Wellbeing and the management of ill health and disability at the workplace (e.g., stroke, diabetes, arthritis, back pain, neck pain, and allergies)
- Restructuring at workplaces and resilience of workers and teams
- Social innovation and wellbeing
- Technological innovation and wellbeing
- Gender and wellbeing at work
- Measuring wellbeing at work (e.g., questionnaires, SMS tracking, and objective measures)