This white paper proposes a new paradigm for business success: becoming a 'healthcare business'. It argues that prioritizing employee health, safety, and well-being is not just beneficial but essential for overall business success.
Key points:
The current business landscape is marked by low employee engagement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, leading to numerous people-related problems and unnecessary costs. A 'healthcare business' is characterized by organizational policies, practices, and working conditions that promote employee health and...
This white paper explores the concept of "quiet quitting" and its implications for the modern workplace. It argues that quiet quitting is fundamentally about a loss of intrinsic motivation rather than laziness or minimal effort.
Key points:
Quiet quitting is related to disengagement, stemming from a lack of appropriate resources and support in the face of work demands. The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped worker expectations, particularly regarding work-time control and work-life balance. There's a disconnect between organizational leaders' desire to return to pre...
The Covid-19 pandemic has created the need for extensive change in how we live, work, parent, get involved in recreation activities, and affiliate with others in our society. Our research and observations over the last six months, combined with discussions with experts, friends, colleagues, and strangers have been enlightening with respect to how people are responding to the pandemic and what strategies for controlling human behavior as a way to control the virus are proving to be effective while others are not--and why. We summarized what we learned below, followed by insights we gained...
This paper explores the complex issues surrounding gig work and its implications for workers' health, safety, well-being, and economic security. It argues for an interdisciplinary approach to addressing these challenges, emphasizing that single-pronged solutions are insufficient to tackle the multifaceted nature of the problem.
Key points:
Definition and characteristics of gig work, including its digital platform-based nature and flexibility. Analysis of the pros and cons of gig work, including potential income, autonomy, and job control, as well as the lack of...
A library on campus recently advertised their new standing-height workstations with a catchy sign proclaiming that “sitting is the new sugar.” The word is out: sitting is bad for us; worse, even, than the sugars and fats we have long vilified, and more harmful than cigarettes. Recent studies have linked prolonged sedentary time with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, back pain, and psychological distress. Simply put, sitting is killing us. Sedentary behavior researcher Travis Saunders cautions that, “all things being equal (body weight, physical activity levels, smoking,...
The Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces (ICHW) has developed an Employer Guide that will enable organizations (with an emphasis on small and medium-sized) to find a workplace wellness program that fits their specific constraints. Small and medium organizations face a number of limitations given their size and financial reserves, but employees’ health and well-being needs are a constant regardless of organization size. Employees need a safe, socially supportive, and health-promoting work environment that not only supports their wellness but also enables them to do their best...
Technology is becoming an increasingly prominent part in the lives of modern workers. A simple search of “well-being” in any app store can yield thousands of results, with each application claiming to improve different facets of users’ daily behaviors to lead a healthier lifestyle. To understand more about the value of health technology in organizations, HealthyWorkplaces conducted a literature review of existing health technologies in the marketplace and their corresponding scientific support. By combining academic and commercial sources, we explored the efficacy of different technologies...
This white paper summarizes the novel methodology and preliminary findings of two focus groups the Center for Healthy Workplaces conducted in Fall 2016 to understand how undergraduate students, members of Generation Z, define seven drivers of need satisfaction—comfort, connection, equity, flexibility, privacy, predictability, and safety—and envision workplaces that support these qualities. In each focus group, participants were assigned to a single driver and worked individually and in teams to define the driver in their own words and then brainstorm, using words and images,...
As an interdisciplinary team, HealthyWorkplaces reaches out to collaborators to better understand how the variety of disciplines can come together to improve the workplace. This month, biomedical engineer Elizabeth Nelson of University of Twente provided her input about lack of sleep causing burnout in an ever increasing number of employees. Further, architect Antony Kim of University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Built Environment shared his knowledge about circadian rhythms and their regulation with proper lighting. We explore how the lighting architecture and biology of...
