Uprooting ill health through organizational interventions: Necessary and/or sufficient conditions for addressing ill health in female- dominated municipal workplaces

Those who takes care of our youngest and oldest for a living tend to have poorer working condition than many others, causing ill health and sickness absence.

Previous research has identified several organizational root-causes of work-related ill health, such as understaffing and low decision latitude, calling for solutions on the structural level, that is, in how work is organized, designed and managed.

Yet, such organizational occupational health interventions (OOHI) are complex with many factors interacting, making them challenging to evaluate and often yielding inconclusive results. Research-practice collaboration and more sophisticated evaluation methods are needed.

This project, co-designed between researchers at Mälardalen university and the municipality of Eskilstuna, aims to explore how a municipality can address root causes of work-related ill-health in female-dominated workplaces.

This will be done through a co-creation process to design, implement and evaluate OOHIs in a collaborative, mixed-method, natural longitudinal experiment (around 50 intervention units; 3000 employees).

Data collections, including questionnaires and workshops, are integrated in existing organizational processes to both yield new knowledge and support the local change process.

Data will be analyzed using an innovative statistical method – coincidence analysis – making it possible to mirror the complex reality where factors may be necessary but not sufficient for reducing sickness absence, or sufficient, but not necessary.

In addition, since senior managers are the gatekeepers of OOHIs, we will investigate their beliefs about causes of work-related ill health and if co-creation change those beliefs.

This project creates an empirical foundation for a highly needed theory development that can help explain under which conditions implementation of OOHIs succeed or fail as well as provide actionable information for practitioners struggling with implementation.