Many psychosocial interventions have already been trialled in different workplaces. The majority of these types of interventions are on the individual level, as these are easier to implement and evaluate. However, psychosocial interventions at an organizational level (for example, changing how work is planned, organised, and executed) can be more effective in the long-term, despite being initially more difficult to implement. Several scientific reviews have been conducted on these types of interventions, indicating that the effects of such interventions vary from positive to negative. There are many reasons for these variations, one being the context in which the intervention is implemented – such as country-specific differences. Scarcely any studies have discussed how country-specific differences can affect the performance of psychosocial interventions. There is also a risk of publication bias, where interventions that have shown to be effective have a larger probability of being published in a scientific, peer-reviewed article.
The goal of this project is to summarise knowledge on organization-level psychosocial interventions in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland using both scientific articles and grey literature. Following the country-specific summaries, the countries will be compared in terms of which interventions have been effective (or ineffective), what conditions are important to ensure interventions attain their goal, and what the Nordic countries can learn from each other. A country-specific report will be published for each country, along with an overall report discussing similarities and differences between the countries. Another main goal is to have close collaborations with stakeholders to ensure that the project results are disseminated in a useful format so they can be utilised in practice.
The knowledge generated by this project can be used to inform employers and policymakers about which psychosocial interventions at the organizational level have worked in their country, and what conditions would be optimal for their interventions to have a good effect. This will help to set priorities for what types of interventions should be implemented in the Norwegian workforce, and reduce costs associated with interventions that have smaller chances of achieving their goals. The country comparison will help identify interventions that could work in the Norwegian context, but which haven’t yet been trialled.
Project leader: Rachel Hasting
Project group members: Margrethe Bjørnstad, Morten Birkeland Nielsen
Research area: Psychosocial and organizational working environment
External collaborators: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH, Finland), The National Research Center for the Working Environment (NFA, Danmark), Karolinska Institutet (KI, Sweden)
Financing: The Nordic Council of Ministers
More information is to be found on the Norwegian project page.