What is the EU-CoWork project?
The EU-CoWork project is a collaboration between 5 academic and 3 dissemination partners from Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Greece and the United Kingdom, and is funded by Horizon Europe (2024-2028). EU-CoWork wants to:
- Better understand the influence of changing workplace organization due to the digital and green transitions on wellbeing, performance, job quality, and work culture for employees confronted with End-of-Life experiences and their colleagues, and to
- Develop and evaluate tailored Compassionate Workplace Programs to support employee health and wellbeing in the work environment, across different national and occupational contexts in Europe.
We will work in partnership with 12 different workplaces in Belgium, Sweden, Austria and Greece to gain insight and develop tools to help create work environments that ensure adequate support to address End-of-Life experiences that may increase risks for poor mental health and wellbeing of employees, and loss of productivity for organizations.
In this project, the research team will collaborate closely with each of the 12 participating workplaces in developing Compassionate Workplace Programs tailored to the specific context, needs, and individual characteristics of each workplace. The researchers will also evaluate the program’s effectiveness in individual workplaces.
AMBITION
EU-CoWork’s ambition is to develop an evidence basis for and subsequently develop, test and evaluate tailored Compassionate Workplaces Programs in Europe to leverage the positive impacts and existing assets of workplaces and mitigate the negative impacts and challenges of the new ways of working for the mental and physical health and wellbeing of employees faced with end-of-life experiences (such as loss, grief, dying, death, serious illness and care giving) and their colleagues.
RELEVANCE
A significant proportion of employees will experience serious illness, caregiving tasks, dying, loss, and grief during their professional life. Such End-of-life experiences affect both employees and their colleagues’ health and wellbeing, but also the work environment in terms of absenteeism, decreased productivity, and occupational safety. EU-CoWork wants to develop ‘Compassionate Workplaces’ that recognize that supervisors and colleagues can play an active role in helping workers feel supported at work during such difficult life experiences.
Research objectives
RO1 To develop an evidence basis for understanding relationships between employee health and wellbeing, work organization, workplace culture, and other contextual aspects, for employees facing EoL experiences and their colleagues in digital and green workplaces:
- To explore what country-specific aspects influence the health and wellbeing of employees facing EoL experiences and their colleagues: healthcare policies, family caregiving policies, age structure of the country.
- To explore what aspects specific of the workplace influence the health and wellbeing of employees facing EoL experiences and their colleagues: organizational size, (compassionate) workplace culture, paid leave policies.
- To explore what subgroup characteristics influence the health and wellbeing of employees facing EoL experiences and their colleagues: gender, age, educational level.
RO2 To develop tailored strategies, i.e., Compassionate Workplaces Programmes (CWPs), to create compassionate workplace cultures and improve health and wellbeing for employees working in digitized and green work environments in different national and work contexts in Europe.
RO3 To describe and evaluate the process of co-creation and implementation of our CWPs and how these influence the programs' outcomes.
RO4 To evaluate the impact of the CWPs (1) on the mental and physical health and wellbeing of employees facing EoL experiences and their colleagues, and (2) on workplace-level outcomes including workplace culture, interpersonal relationships, production loss, hours lost due to absence.
RO5 To evaluate the economic value and cost-effectiveness of the CWPs and how the CWPs may help prevent financial losses due to the confrontation with serious illness, death or loss.
Work packages
WP1 Coordination, management and progress monitoring (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
WP2 Development and developmental evaluation of a tailored Compassionate Workplaces program (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
WP3 Preparations for data collection. (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
WP4 Impact and process evaluation of the tailored Compassionate Workplaces program (WP Lead: University of Sheffield)
WP5 Cross-sectional analysis of baseline observational data (WP Lead: Luleå University of Technology and University of Graz)
WP6 Longitudinal qualitative & quantitative subgroup and country comparative analyses (WP Lead: Athens University of Economics and Business)
WP7 Cost-effectiveness analysis (WP Lead: Athens University of Economics and Business)
WP8 Dissemination, Exploitation and communication (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
WP9 Ethics (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
WP10 Cluster activities (WP Lead: Vrije Universiteit Brussel)