The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (HCPDS) has been awarded a three year Pioneer Award by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a study entitled Workplace Redesign for Worker Well-Being: Blueprint for Resilience.
The aim is to develop a new vision of the work-health equation by first, expanding the view of health to include a multi-faceted perspective on “well-being” and “resilience,” and second, broadening the health-promoting strategies considered by employers and policymakers to include a work redesign approach. The research itself will involve conducting a systematic review of publications on workplace interventions and their effects on worker well-being using transdisciplinary methods. Qualitative interviews with employers, employees, and employee-advocacy groups will be conducted to gather information on effective strategies and practices. At the conclusion of the project, a website will be launched to highlight important findings and a toolkit with recommendations and guidance will be devised.
The Workplace Redesign project will be led by Lisa Berkman, the Thomas Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global and Population Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and
director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; Laura Kubzansky, the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and co-director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Erin Kelly, professor of work and organizational studies at MIT Sloan School of Management. Project Manager Kimberly Fox will oversee all day-to-day components of the project.
The RWJF-funded project provides a base for a larger initiative the HCPDS has recently launched on Workplace and Well-Being (WWBI) that includes related grants and fellowship programs.