Context: According to the English Institute of Health Equity (UCL, Workplace interventions to improve
health and wellbeing, 2014) both physical and psychosocial work environments can affect health.
Over the last decade, the literature exploring link between management behaviour and employee
well-being has grown dramatically and the consistent message is that the way employees are
managed is a key determinant of their health and well-being (Skakon et al 2010, Kelloway and
Barling 2010). For this reason, it’s necessary mapping competencies that a manager should own to
be able to implement a correct approach for preventing and reducing stress at work. This is what the
WELLy project will do and, once the management competencies needed for engendering employee
engagement, health and well-being will be identified, the challenge becomes supporting managers to
develop the competencies and use them in their people management approach.
Objectives: Given the exponential increase of work-related stress issues and the diffusion of
depression among the European citizens, the WELLy project aims to set the role of Work Well-being
Manager (WWM) in charge of making sure that daily working conditions are fair and as healthy as
reasonably possible for every employee so that the overall quality of life at work improves within the
organisation and across economies.
Participants: At least 3 SMEs per pilot country (Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal), with their
employers and employees, will be involved. Direct participants will be the learners of the pilot training
courses. SMEs will be involved with 1 participant each, choosing the employee/manager that is in
charge of Human Resources management. Other participants that will be indirectly involved are
employees working in the pilot SMEs as they will benefit from the introduction of the Work Well-being
Manager professional figure in the workplace.
Activities: As starting point an Analysis of the State of the Art in partners’ countries, EU and USA will
be carried out and will lead to a summary of literature and collection of case studies of companies
that applied tools and rules to manage and guarantee the organizational well-being. Also an empirical
research will be conducted to gather data directly from the companies (employers and employees)
and associations for the protection of workers’ rights (IO1). These data will represent the conceptual
basis for the definition of the WWM professional profile and the related Training Curriculum and
Course (IO2-IO3), leading to its recognition at EU level (IO4), and the development of a Manual with
the optimal Toolkit for the implementation of measures to prevent and combat work-related stress
(IO5).
Methodology: Project activities will be implemented following a 3-step methodology.
1) RESEARCH: First phase will start with Analysis of the State of the Art and will also define
indicators to collect to evaluate the impact of introduction of the WWM in companies. Matching
between experimental data and literature data will lead to the definition of the Work Well-being
Manager professional profile and Training Curriculum. Main competences that this Manager should
have and/or acquire through a training course will be defined in order to build a new professional
specification and develop a common training model, learning contents and training materials.
Call 2019 Round 1 KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices
KA202 – Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training
FormId KA202-F6CE37EF Deadline (Brussels Time) 21 Mar 2019 12:00:00
EN 4 / 199
Building on results of the initial literature research, indicators collected from the enterprises and
public information, an evaluation model will be developed to assess costs and benefits of introducing
a WWM.
2) PILOTING: Following step will be the experimentation through pilot tests of the Work Well-being
Managers training course into the partners’ countries and evaluation of the impact.
Validation of WWM in pilot companies will be conducted through the introduction of the Work Wellbeing
Manager in 3 pilot companies per country. Monitoring of achieved results will be conducted
through comparison between the employees’ wellbeing before and after.
3) EXPLOITATION: At the end of the research and piloting phases, a certification model to evaluate
Work Well-being Manager’s skills will be developed and exploitation activities will be conducted in
order to promote its wide recognition at European level.
Results and Impact: As overall result, the project will elaborate the new job profile for WWM from a
societal as well as from a firm’s perspective. From the firm’s perspective, lower work-related stress
improves productivity and reduces turnover. From the societal perspective, the proportion of
economically unproductive to productive times during a person’s lifetime is improved by reducing
times of sickness, unemployment, and/or early retirement. The expected impacts are:
– Introduction in the workplace of policies on mental health and welfare;
– Improved mental health and reduced sickness absence in the working population;
– Positive impact on productivity and economic results of workplaces.
This is a private project. To join you must be a registered site member and request project membership.
