Workplace Communities and Work-Related Well-Being in Transition
The research group develops a proactive approach to analyzing work-related well-being at the level of workplace communities.
The group has two broad research challenges: first, to conceptually analyze the notion of work-related well-being; and second, to analyze and participate in transformation and redesign efforts in which well-being is constructed at work.
Group members come from adult education, medical science, social psychology and sociology.
The group is headed by Docent Kirsti Launis. She is working on two research projects where change processes and so-called "impossible tasks" are analyzed according to their effect on individual and collective work-related well-being in a number of work settings. The analyses are communicated back to practitioners and occupational health experts.
Tarja Kantola's focus is on impossible tasks. She studies an intervention where employees of a bank branch analyzed and articulated the impossible tasks of their work and designed solutions to them.
Annarita Koiranen is studying a female-dominated work community of vocational teachers in a public sector organization.
Teija Mankkinen is studying a community of firefighters: the values of the community and change in the firefighters' everyday activity. Teija works at the Department of Sociology at the University of Helsinki.
Jorma Mäkitalo's thesis is on the well-being of elderly care workers in an elderly care home. Jorma's work focuses on disturbances and the potential for change in the work processes of the elderly care home. He works at the Merikoski Rehabilitation and Research Centre in Oulu.
Anna-Liisa Niemelä studies haste and time pressure, which are regularly found to be among the most important sources of stress and fatigue experienced by Finnish workers. She analyzes the problems of haste, time pressure and social construction of time in home helpers' work.
Tanja Rokkanen is analyzing and developing work models for an occupational health care unit to develop dialogue both within the unit and between the unit and its clients. Tanja is working for the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki.
The group's research is conducted in projects financed by The Finnish Work Environmental Fund, the Ministry of Labor, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland and the City of Helsinki. The group continues to benefit from an ongoing dialogue with occupational health and safety researchers and rehabilitation researchers in Finland.
Members of the group
Tarja Kantola
Annarita Koiranen
Kirsti Launis (head of the group)
Teija Mankkinen
Jorma Mäkitalo
Anna-Liisa Niemelä
Tanja Rokkanen
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