Work Futures Sandboxes
ICHW has partnered with UCSF’s California Labor Laboratory (CALL) to launch an initiative to gather “unfiltered” information from diverse occupational groups and stakeholders in a “Sandbox” style format to understand the current state of worker experience, challenges and issues to worker health and well-being, and preparation for the future of work, worker experience, and workplaces. Summaries of information shared in the Sandboxes will be the source material for a gathering of diverse experts to devise a new vision for the future of work and a framework for implementing the vision. The ultimate outcome of this work is a series of implementation products that translate the vision into practice.
Workplace Mental Health Initiative
The Workplace Mental Health Initiative at the Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI) at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley engaged relevant Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) regarding the current state of workplace mental health. This work extends the investigation of the scientific and practice literature regarding workplace mental health strategies and the efficacy of those strategies in reducing the risk of workplace mental health issues and addressing existing worker mental health issues that manifest in the workplace. In addition to learning what is known about workplace strategies and the various approaches to addressing mental health issues in the scientific literature, we wanted to learn from first-line professionals how they experienced workplace strategies. In this Report, we outline our efforts to engage with these professionals. The results from this engagement will provide greater insight into the mental health problem that workers and organizational leaders face today, regardless of size or industry. Findings suggest that the scale of the workplace mental health crisis is significantly greater than what is currently reflected in the literature. Whether in the office, the field, or at home, workers and leaders alike are experiencing a broad spectrum of mental health challenges—from anxiety and depression to burnout, abusive behavior, and addiction.
Human-centric Pre-Design Process for New Buildings
This project aims to redesign the process by which new buildings are conceived, planned, and built so that occupants’ needs and work context requirements are addressed during the earliest stages of the process and carried through to the creation of building mock-ups to assist the architects and engineers in bringing this plan to reality. The project addresses the problem commonly experienced that occupant input is either trivial or missing during most of the pre-design planning process, resulting in built environments that lack critical features that occupants need and/or create impediments to occupant health, well-being, and effective performance. At each stage of the pre-design process, occupant needs and behavioral requirements are embedded in the planning to ensure that the architects and engineers build a structure that promotes occupant effectiveness while protecting and sustaining occupant health and well-being. A case study describing this methodology and outcomes will be written and shared publicly to serve a template for future building projects.
Empirical Study of Built Environment Features, Engagement, and Burnout Resilience
A study is being conducted to understand the relationship between workplace built features and self-reported levels of psychological health and burnout. The study involves a convenience sample of working adults who describe their work environments and report their psychological health at the time of their description. Significant relationships between physical environmental features and degrees of engagement and health will be reported.
Handbook for Designing Spaces and Organizational Strategies for Promoting Creative Thinking and Innovation (In Progress)
An extensive review of environmental factors related to individual creativity and innovation combined with insights obtained from studies of creative and innovative people in organizations reveal a set of essential elements that need to be incorporated into work spaces and working conditions that can stimulate success. These elements are being combined into an easy-to-read handbook and practical guide for organizations to implement.
Healthy Workplace Assessment: Cross-cultural Comparisons between Norway and the United States
Through a grant from the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley, Norway’s University of Science & Technology (NTNU) and BI Norwegian Business School (BI), and Finland’s University of Tampere developed a new questionnaire for assessing the degree of “healthiness” of a workplace and comparing the characteristics of healthy workplaces across countries. The questionnaire development followed several current theories indicating the components of a healthy workplace and followed developments within the World Health Organization in their understanding of worker health and well-being. The Healthy Workplace Index (HWI) was administered to 1,084 workers representing multiple occupations in the three countries, and analyses of responses indicated different relative strengths in the make-up of workplace health in the three countries, but despite these differences, return on personal investment was a universally recognized positive factor in all three countries. See the “Our Work” section of the website for more details of the study and study findings.
Competitiveness, Productivity and Quality of Working Life—Leadership and Organizational Development in the Digital Transformation
Tampere University and Turku University School of Economics received a three-year grant from Business Finland to conduct an in-depth, cutting-edge study of how to integrate better the need for greater productivity and the digital transformation accelerated by artificial intelligence while maintaining and building expert and knowledge work. The desire is to achieve a balance between the creation of new working and management practices, and the reconsideration of the ethical and value bases of expert work. The mix of organizational innovation, creativity, and efficiency with the meaningfulness of work, division of labor, employee well-being, and organizational renewal represent some of the issues that these researchers will grapple with and look for a path forward which will guide Finland through the very challenging times ahead. Researchers will call upon multiple methods of data collection, analysis, and problem-solving. Dr. Cristina Banks will serve as an external international advisor in the areas of data collection, analysis, and development of the roadmap for the future. Her contribution to the project will build upon the knowledge acquired through the Work Futures Initiative at UC Berkeley. She will work with Dr. Riitta-Liisa Larjovuori, Dr. Laura Bordi, Dr. Kirsi Heikkilä-Tammi, and Professor Kalle Pajunen from Tampere University on this project.
Interdisciplinary Models for Research and Practice
Researchers and practitioners from multiple universities have convened a work group focused on building a “toolkit” for conducting research and projects that are more comprehensive and holistic by bringing together the right partners from different disciplines who can contribute important and timely knowledge to address complex problems. Today problems continue to be unaddressed or poorly resolved largely due to the overwhelming dominance of single-factor study designs and deeply siloed actors. The richness of knowledge available outside of one’s discipline that could be brought to bear at multiple points in project design goes unrecognized and underappreciated. This effort aims to change interest in interdisciplinary research and practice by providing an operating manual for how to work with interdisciplinary partners. Literature provides multiple examples of who should work together and why they should work together but not how to work together when the knowledge base, perspectives, and desired outcomes tend to be very different. Our work capitalizes on interdisciplinary work from different literatures where pieces of successful true collaboration has been achieved and help build a path for professionals to follow. Where there are gaps in the operating manual, the team builds upon case studies and other resources to fill in the gaps. The team consists of Professor Candice Thomas (Arizona State University), Professor Rebecca Brossoit (Rice University), Professor Haley Cobb (St. Louis University), Ryszard Koziel (St. Louis University), Dr. Cristina Banks (University of California, Berkeley), Jeff Loi (University of California, San Francisco), and Cosette Gagnon (University of California, Berkeley).
Development of a Total Worker Health Profession
Total Worker Health® (TWH) is a framework that holds the promise of serving the public’s health, safety and well-being needs in a critically important way: it joins efforts to protect the public from work-related safety and health hazards and to promote illness and injury prevention to elevate worker health and well-being. The TWH framework accomplishes this mission through policies, programs, and practices that integrate protection with promotion efforts. First developed in 2011 by the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), this approach has grown significantly within occupational health and related fields, generating a growing capacity of professionals who implement TWH principles and practices, making the workforce healthier, safer, and feeling greater well-being. The education and certification of TWH professionals has been primarily the responsibility of NIOSH Total Worker Health Centers of Excellence (COEs) and associated University programs. However, the future of these COEs is uncertain, leaving the question of the future development of TWH professionals in limbo. However, the Society for Total Worker Health (S4TWH), a new professional organization comprised of TWH professionals, is making plans for ensuring the future educational efforts by coordinating educational programming across universities and related programs, assisting with certifications of professionals, and building the capacity of a Total Worker Health workforce that plays an important role in a wide variety of jobs and organizations. As the COEs wind down in 2026, the S4TWH will begin ramping up its efforts to carry the profession forward. This effort is being led by Dr. Cristina Banks and Dr. Lili Tenney, as well as members of the S4TWH Board of Directors and the in-coming Society President, Dr. John Dony.