Work health technology

Research themes

Our Work Health Technology expertise group carries out applied research and advises on work, health, and employability of employees for policy and organisations. Specific themes are:

• Psychosocial and physical stress
• Vitality, engagement, and mental and physical health
• Health management and occupational health
• Health and safety, and occupational health and safety catalogues
• Monitoring trends, future scenarios, and cost-benefit analyses
• Specific themes such as working longer, the elderly, and the chronically ill

Current topics

In the near future, we will focus on:

• Employee engagement and commitment
• Aggression, violence, flexibilisation, and other risks faced by the growing service industry
• Working longer
• The integration of public and occupational health and safety themes. Namely, full employee health in an organisational context.

Our disciplines

• occupational and organisational psychology
• health sciences
• ergonomics
• medicine
• statistics
• economy

Knowledge of occupational risks and job satisfaction

Due to the ongoing developments in the knowledge economy, there’s a great need for expertise from both companies and government to increase the employability of employees in a sustainable way. Increasing this human capital must take place primarily in labour organisations. This concerns:

• improving the quality of work and health
• reducing new work risks, such as lack of exercise
• preventing aggression at work

Collaborations

We collaborate with different partners in various networks:

• We advise the government, social partners, and other organisations on sustainable employability. And we monitor and research trends in labour.
• We support companies, institutions, and government organisations in shaping and evaluating their policies.
• We support partners, intermediaries, and advisers in assuring their quality by organising learning networks and tool development.
• We work in national and international networks.

Applications and impact

With our knowledge and the results of our research, we improve technologies in work and health and develop various tools. A few examples.

National employee and employer surveys

With national employee and employer surveys (NEA, WEA), we monitor the state of labour in the Netherlands on behalf of the national government (SZW). The material is also used for policy justification. And, internationally, it’s used for quality of work correspondence. Examples include:

• work-life balance
• monitoring of industrial accidents
• absenteeism brochure
• evaluation of the Working Conditions Act
• the Working Hours Act

In-depth scientific research

We conduct in-depth scientific research by linking surveys to register data. This gives us a better understanding of the relationship between work experience and register data, such as:

• labour participation
• absenteeism
• hospitalisation
• death after diagnosis
• productivity at organisational level

Tool development

We developed the following tools:

• ‘Happy Worker Game’ (serious gaming, a game to learn and promote behavioural change, for management)
• ALERT (a job stress assessment tool)
• DIX (a sustainable employability assessment tool)
• ‘Aggression settled’ (a tool for cost-effectiveness of aggression management)

International conference

We encourage collaboration between public and occupational health & safety by organising a large international conference under the auspices of the WHO (World Health Organisation).