Good Work Good Health – Mental Wellbeing in the Telecommunications Industry
The IOM has recently completed a research project on mental wellbeing in the European telecommunications industry. The work was carried out on behalf of ETNO, the European Telecommunication Network Operators Association http://www.etno.be/ and the trade Unions federation Uni-europa http://www.uniglobalunion.org/ and was funded by the European Commission.
Good Work Good Health
The aim of the project was to gather evidence on good practice in managing mental wellbeing in the industry and from this feed into the development of guidelines to be dissemination across the telecommunications sector. The project was developed in two stages, the first an evidence review of published guidelines and reviews to answer the following questions
- What are the work factors that are associated with impaired mental wellbeing?
- What work factors are associated with enhanced mental wellbeing?
- What work arrangements can mitigate or facilitate return to work for individuals who have poor mental wellbeing?
The systematic review identified a number of work factors that may impair or enhance mental wellbeing. These included strong evidence associating poor mental wellbeing with task factors such as high demands, lack of decision latitude, lack of social support and low levels of control over work. Further factors linked to poor wellbeing included low levels of job satisfaction being particularly associated with increased burnout plus long-term sickness absence linked with high demand jobs. Work factors associated with enhanced mental wellbeing included having a summer vacation, increasing job control, improving task design, having clear roles and good work relationships. A limited amount of relevant research was identified that informed good practice for individuals returning to work after sickness absence, but a number of factors have the potential to ease the transition including psychological rehabilitation, regular contact between employee and employer, identifying the source of the problem and implementing appropriate workplace adjustments to accommodate the persons needs. Further details are available in the project report http://www.gwgh.eu/
From the review a template was developed for use as a semi-structured interview with company representatives within the telecommunications industry. The topics covered included:
- Measurement of mental wellbeing
- Organisational interventions for mental wellbeing
- Person-directed interventions
- Return to work after sickness absence
- Working Time
- Organisational Justice
- Managers and supervisors
- Training and New Technology
Eight telecommunications companies took part in the project and interviews were carried out with individuals involved in managing mental wellbeing. These included representatives from Occupational Health, Human Resources and the Trade Unions. The companies that took part were representative of different company sizes and regions across Europe
The interviews aimed to identify good practice within the companies and some key practices are listed below
- Assessing mental wellbeing using tools based on recognised models of workplace stress
- Focusing interventions on areas of high reporting
- Allowing flexible working where possible
- Ensuring overtime was not excessive
- Ensuring employees took annual leave
- Clear and transparent recruitment and promotion routes
- Employing managers with both business skills and people skills
- Training managers to identify poor mental health
- Professional support for managers when dealing with team members with problems
Our research report is being translated into four languages as part of the dissemination of the project. From the results of the research, ETNO and Uni-europa have developed good practice guidelines including case studies that will be translated into 12 European languages. The full report and guidelines will be available at http://www.gwgh.eu/ along with details of the 2-day conference.
To launch the guidelines, a two-day conference was held in Brussels during October and Joanne Crawford and Hilary Cowie from IOM presented the results of this research. This study took an innovative approach to identifying good practice in managing mental wellbeing in the workplace and the results and guidance are relevant to other industry sectors.