GRANTS. Both schools and healthcare experience significant staff turnover and high sick leave. Studies show that the cause is often deficiencies in the organizational and social work environment, and that managers lack resources to address them. Magnus Åkerström, associate professor in occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Gothenburg, is awarded SEK 4,159,000 by Afa Insurance to investigate how preventive work environment efforts are organized, primarily in the public sector.
“Previous studies show that, for example, the public sector struggles with staff shortages and high sick leave due to inadequate organizational and social work environment”, says Magnus Åkerström, associate professor in occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Gothenburg and development leader at the Västra Götaland Region.
“In many workplaces, they follow their routines for systematic work environment efforts and succeed quite well in terms of the physical work environment. However, managers often feel that they lack tools to address the organizational and social work environment. In this project, we are interested in finding out how to organize preventive work environment efforts.”
Magnus Åkerström has previously researched methods to improve deficient work environments and the effect of major work environment initiatives. Now he will examine the organizational prerequisites required to succeed in preventive organizational and social work environment efforts.
“In a previous project, we saw that even if there is an ambition to work preventively at the organizational level, it often results in measures for individual employees. For example, one may have identified a challenge such as high staff turnover or high sick leave, but it ends up with a stress management course or an inspirational lecture”, says Magnus Åkerström.
“What we want to address are the organizational factors, what conditions managers have to work preventively. It may involve the type of support a manager receives from the HR department or occupational health. But it can also be factors such as decision-making authority or budgetary conditions that a manager has.”
Survey and observational study in service professions
In the project, they will study how preventive work environment efforts are organized in various operations, primarily in the public sector. First, through a survey, and then through observational studies in workplaces.
“We have developed a survey and aim to send it to about 150 employers, who will then describe how they have chosen to organize their work environment efforts. What we want to know more about is how one identifies a challenge, how one designs an intervention, and how one approaches the work. We are interested in what happens in these initial steps and will therefore not follow up on the effects of the interventions.”
“Then we will select ten operations and follow how they proceed in their preventive work and which organizational factors affect the choices they make. Our hope is to include workplaces in both municipalities and regions and in the private sector. We are targeting what is called the service sector, workplaces where people work, such as health centers, private healthcare providers, hospital departments, support homes, and various types of municipal operations.”
What do you hope to achieve with the project?
“Firstly, we want to understand how preventive work environment efforts are carried out in practice in these workplaces to be able to identify how to better utilize the knowledge within research. There are organizational factors at several levels. Common processes, such as the design of patient or referral flows and the choice of IT systems, are at a higher organizational level and are things that the individual manager usually cannot control”, says Magnus Åkerström.
“How one has chosen to conduct the operations or how tasks are distributed is at the workplace level and are factors that a manager and employee can influence. There is a lot of research showing the importance of engaging all levels in preventive work environment efforts; higher-level decisions affect the ability to work in the later stages. I hope that we can contribute to an increased understanding that one needs to ensure adequate conditions in the workplace to work on organizational and social issues.”
Research that is practically useful
“We want to contribute in the long run to promoting a good work environment with fewer work injuries and reduced ill health. We do this, among other things, by supporting research that is practically useful in workplaces, says Ulrika Hektor, head of Afa Insurance’s R&D department.”
One of the main criteria when deciding which projects to support is that the research should be practically useful. Now we have granted support to Magnus Åkerström and a new project that is important from a preventive perspective.
The project Creating Sustainable Working Conditions in Practice – Employers’ knowledge and approaches to preventive work environment efforts at the organizational level runs until June 2026.
In total, AFA insurance distributes SEK 28 million in occupational health. At the Sahlgrenska Academy, Monica Bertilsson also receives part of the funds. She receives SEK 881,000 to conduct a follow-up analysis of data from a previous project financed by Afa Insurance where managers in the private and public sectors discussed experiences of addressing mental health issues among employees. The follow-up project runs until October 2025 and is expected to provide practically useful knowledge about the methods managers use to support employees experiencing mental health issues. The project is expected to result in an information pamphlet that can be supportive for managers.
BY: AFA INSURANCE
