Recovery Calculator

1. The assessment requires the participation of a work unit supervisor and personnel representatives (preferably more than one). It is a good idea to agree on the development activities together with the entire unit.
2. The Recovery Calculator is suitable for assessing the current situation and planning the development work of units with similar work practices. The results can also be used by senior supervisors, occupational health care and HR management. They should be contacted about initiating and implementing the development activities.
3. The Recovery Calculator can be used as part of the annual risk assessment and occupational health co-operation. It can be taken again after any development activities have been implemented in order to assess their effectiveness.  

Information required to answer the questions can be found in the following systems, among others:

• guidelines and decisions by the management and HR
• HR systems
• hours tracking
• previous surveys.

The questions

• Can employees in general control both their working and leisure time?
• Has the organization agreed that work is done only during working hours and/or defined the conditions under which employees must be available during their free time?
• Are there people in your organization who work 50 hours or more per week?
• Do instructions regarding performance appraisals include annually discussions of issues related to workload and coping?
• If there is a lot of traveling in your organization, are there defined arrangements related to recovery and leisure time after travel days?
• Does the management of the organization set an example of aiming to work only during working hours?
• Is remote work or a combination of remote and in-office work (hybrid work) a common practice at your workplace?
• Have the physical, psychosocial and cognitive stress factors of work been assessed and identified at your workplace?
• Has the physical stress caused by work been minimized with measures such as safe working practices, solutions related to workspaces and the work environment or by utilizing work equipment and assistive devices?
• Has the psychosocial workload been minimized by measures such as increasing the ability to influence work, clearly defining objectives and responsibilities, ensuring reasonable workloads, and developing interaction co-operation in the work community?
• Do you develop and maintain a sufficient number of good practices to foster a sense of community?
• Has the cognitive burden of work been minimized by measures such as work organization, realistic workload estimates, and ensuring peaceful conditions for work that requires concentration by minimizing interruptions and distractions?
• Do you have any meeting practices in place that promote recovery related to factors such as the number, length and timing of meetings?
• Is it possible, both at the workplace and when working remotely, to have a daily lunch break, coffee break and microbreaks (a break of less than five minutes) according to need to create “porosity” in the working day?                      
• Do you have any policies that encourage exercise in commuting and at the workplace?
• Is there shift work done in your organization? Do you have people in our organization who have more than once less than 11 hours between the work shifts weekly, have less than 28 hours off after night shifts, have only one day off between night shifts, may have a weekly rest period of less than 35 hours or have individual days off weekly?