In September 2020, the H-WORK project is officially entering its implementation phase, involving 10 intervention sites structured into two groups, namely Group 1 and Group 2. The start of the implementation activities follows after more than ten months of intense preparation, both theoretical and methodological.
Specifically, beginning the implementation phase of the project means to conduct a thorough analysis of the needs which each intervention site displays. In particular, when it comes to mental health promotion in the organisation and psychological well-being at work.
By using the recently developed HAT (H-WORK Assessment Toolkit) protocol for needs analysis, the H-WORK team is going to assess the different workplace-related stress factors existing in each organisation involved. This will allow gaining a better understanding of the peculiar needs of each considered work environment at the multiple levels of analysis (individual, group, leader, organisation) described by the IGLOo model.
The IGLOo framework
The IGLOo model itself constitutes the main theoretical background of the HAT and the needs analysis activities that are going to be carried out within the H-WORK project. Different levels of the workplace are going to be tackled in combination with a multi-method, bottom-up, participatory approach. In practice, this is going to correspond to administering interviews to middle and senior managers, conducting focus groups with employees, and holding strategic meetings with organisational stakeholders.
Therefore, participants will be fully involved in the analysis as active agents of change through different moments. For instance, cognitive mapping exercises whereby employees will be able to identify and express the pros and cons of their work in terms of mental health. An even more precise picture of each organisation will be achieved based on collecting complementary objective data such as sickness absence, staff turnover, occupational injuries etc.
Timing
The needs analysis period is going to last between 2 and 3 months. It is going to involve both SMEs and public organisations from Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Intervention sites’ sectors span from healthcare to higher education, from IT to manufacturing.
Based on the need analysis’ results, each test site will be wholly involved in decision-making processes regarding which multilevel intervention to implement. In detail, a participatory process including all stakeholders, is scheduled to develop and decide upon an action plan. In other words, to ensure a switch from needs to concrete actions. These interventions will, therefore, be meant to address and solve workplace mental health issues raised throughout the analysis of the organisational needs in terms of mental health promotion.
Then, the quantitative baseline data collection phase will start by means of the online HAT questionnaire consisting of distal, proximal and objective measurements that represent the starting point of our analysis throughout the implementation phase. The figure below shows the H-WORK intervention sites and their distribution within the two groups:
All these activities aim to activate a more widespread process within each test site, where each level of the organisation can be concretely activated to promote the mental health of managers and employees, so as to improve the psychological wellbeing in the European workplaces involved.