The fast-changing high-performance economy is highly dependent on healthy employees – and at the same time is putting their health at risk. Expectations of employees regarding health@work are rising. In a workshop format, students learn how to develop effective, exemplary projects to promote good working conditions, work-life balance or healthy lifestyles in companies.
Learning objective
After active participation in the course, students will • Know the key individual, team-level, and organizational factors influencing health@work • Be familiar with health-related challenges and opportunities of a changing world of work • Know intervention strategies for improving working conditions, work-life balance and health behaviors in companies • Be able to design an exemplary intervention project– based on key principles and a systematic planning cycle
Content
The globalization and the digital transformation of our economy leads to fast changes in organizations and of working conditions. Work becomes more flexible regarding time, location and employment contracts. Employees become more demanding regarding their autonomy, the quality of working life and their work-life balance. In this dynamic context, offering standardized health promotion programs in companies is not sufficient any more. Employers and employees need to jointly develop tailored approaches how to continuously assess and improve health@work. Thus, we want to enable you to support companies in this process. The course consists of four parts. The first part with four sessions provides an introduction into approaches to promote health@work. The lectures will present and discuss these approaches using practical examples and discuss them with the students. Session 1: Course overview; dynamic, challenging context of our economy; intervention approaches; core principles and planning steps of a project for promoting health@work Session 2: Promoting Health @ Work: Improving working conditions Session 3: Promoting Health @ Work: Lifestyle interventions at work Session 4: Promoting Health @ Work: Work-Life-Balance and Leisure crafting interventions
The second part aims to identify and sharpen the project ideas developed by students in groups of two. We offer a short version of a design thinking workshop to help students generate innovative ideas. The pitch presentations help to focus on the essence of the own idea and to trigger constructive feedback for improving it. Session 5: Design thinking workshop: Find your own project idea Session 6: Pitch: Presentations of the project idea in plenary incl. feedback
The third part has a workshop format. We introduce all students how to practically plan a health@work project. Then the two-person project teams are assigned to four tutors. These tutors support the teams in their systematic, detailed planning of the own project idea. Particularly, students will consider the four principles of successful health promotion projects: systematic planning, participation of stakeholders, combined individual- and environmental-level actions, integration into company routines. Session 7: Introduction to practical project planning in-a-nutshell Sessions 8-11: Tutored workshop
In the fourth part, the two-person project teams present their project plan in the plenary, discuss it with all students, and obtain feedback by the course leader. Sessions 12-13: Presentations & discussions of projects
Given the hands-on workshop character of this lecture, students are required to actively participate in all sessions. Besides raising knowledge on promoting health@work, the students generally improve their project development skills. Also, as the course has students from D-MTEC, D-HEST and D-USYS, it facilitates their transdisciplinary exchange. Transdisciplinary skills are increasingly needed for addressing complex needs in our society.
Prerequisites / Notice
A course for students dedicated to applied learning through projects. As the whole course is designed as a hands-on workshop for the students, active participation in all lectures is required. Class size limited to 30 students.