International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has published the first paper of H-Work project researchers as part of the Special Issue Workplace Interventions.
This paper describes the theoretical foundations, conceptual model, study design and methodological approaches of the EU H2020 H-WORK project, which aims to design, develop, implement, test and validate multilevel interventions for promoting mental health in public workplaces and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
By highlighting the working mechanisms involved in mental health promotion at different levels of the organisation, the research should provide innovative insights on how to improve working conditions around Europe.
The study is innovative in multiple ways.
- First, it goes beyond the current debate on whether individual- or organisational-level interventions are most effective in improving employee health and well-being and tests the cumulative effects of multilevel interventions, that is, interventions addressing individual, group, leader and organisational levels.
- Second, it tailors its interventions to address the aftermaths of the Covid-19 pandemic and develop suitable multilevel interventions for dealing with new ways of working.
- Third, it uses realist evaluation to explore and identify the working ingredients of and the conditions required for each level of intervention, and their outcomes.
Finally, an economic evaluation will assess both the cost-effectiveness analysis and the affordability of the interventions from the employer perspective.
The study integrates the training transfer and the organisational process evaluation literature to develop toolkits helping end-users to promote mental health and well-being in the workplace.
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