BGM4NewWork

What is is about

Digitalisation, demographic developments and the acceleration of innovation cycles are creating an ever greater need for companies to be adaptive when developing new work processes and forms of work. This means that occupational health must also be fundamentally rethought. The spatial and temporal diversification of work (e.g. through home office, coworking, flexible working hours) as well as the advancing digitalisation of the world of work pose challenges for employees as well as decision-makers for occupational health management (OHM) in companies.

Aims of the research project

The BGM4NewWork project aims to derive evidence-based recommendations for the design of and access to BGM services for various new forms of work. To this end, new forms of work will first be clustered and analysed with regard to their occupational health management needs and requirements. In the process, target group-specific health risks and salutogenetic potentials will be identified within the framework of a prospective-explorative mixed methods study. This includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods, which consist of quantitative online surveys, partially standardised interviews, qualitative surveys and context analyses as well as expert workshops. The aim of the project is to derive a checklist that supports companies, employees and providers of occupational health management measures in offering or demanding target group-specific and needs-oriented occupational health management measures for NewWork settings.

Motivation

The development towards agile, flexible and digital forms of work is summarised under the term “New Work” (NW).

The effects of temporally and spatially flexible forms of work, as an example of new forms of work, on the health of employees are controversially discussed. Agile working and digitalisation can effectively promote health, but can also have the opposite effect. On the one hand, there is a reduction in stress and an improved psychological well-being. On the other hand, working in a home office, for example, shows a tendency towards more work with resulting exhaustion and a reduction in recovery times as well as a decrease in ergonomic standards.

The COVID-19 pandemic is acting as a catalyst for new forms of work. Within a very short period of time, a large number of companies have undertaken extensive transformations. These can be summarised under the term Pandemic (P)NW.

The new forms of (P)NW are accompanied in many companies by low levels of knowledge and uncertainty about new forms of work and their health implications. It is becoming apparent that known challenges of care in the area of occupational health and safety will be intensified and that new concepts are needed that think along the lines of access to employees. Occupational health management is an important factor in creating health-promoting and health-appropriate conditions and in strengthening prevention among employees. However, previous occupational health management approaches are not sufficiently oriented towards (P)NW forms of work and do not do justice to individual and structural needs. For many companies, the interaction between (P)NW and health is a proverbial “black box”. The health effects of the new digital, agile and flexible forms of work and the requirements for the design of efficient occupational health management structures within these settings have not yet been sufficiently investigated.