Hope, purpose, agency, job resources, work engagement, and work ability - towards sustainable well-being and success

The project produces information on what kind of resources hope and the purpose of work are for well-being at work and sustainable work performance and how they can be strengthened at workplaces. 

We will also study the effects of loneliness - a key threat to well-being - and interactions between different aspects of well-being at work, such as work engagement, job boredom and job burnout. This will produce knowledge about the significance of increased loneliness during the pandemic and highlight ways to reduce it at workplaces. 

We introduce the concept of socially courageous actions to discussions about the development of work life by studying the effects of social courage on work engagement and social support provided by colleagues. It is needed to highlight and solve various problems at the workplace that are not otherwise discussed for different reasons.

We will validate a new survey method for assessing multidimensional work ability and publish a freely available user guide with reference group information for use by workplaces, occupational health care, and other interested parties. The purpose is to deepen the understanding of the multidimensionality of work ability, taking into account that an employee may have work ability required by their work in some area, even if it is limited in another area.

The impact goals of the study are: 

• strengthen the success of the participating workplaces in the capital region - and also elsewhere - by providing information on factors that promote employees' sustainable well-being, health, and regenerative work activities
• create an empowering outlook of hope and a purpose at workplaces in a work life filled with many uncertainties
• increase understanding, especially of the importance of hope, purpose, job resources, agency, work engagement, and work ability in the light of research results and ways to strengthen these
• produce information on the most important job resources for well-being at work, especially for supervisors and managers,
• produce knowledge on the harmful effects that job burnout and loneliness have on work and on factors that protect against them
• encourage socially courageous behaviors at Finnish workplaces, when necessary.

We will communicate about the research results in various ways throughout the project. We will publish our key research findings as articles in international journals. We also write blog posts and other popularised texts and provide training on the topics we study.