This PrOPEL Hub research showcase offers insight into six years of ESRC-funded work on workplace wellbeing and productivity at the University of East Anglia and RAND Europe. We will discuss selected research findings and how we are creating an evidence-based online wellbeing toolkit, which will be available to employers and managers in 2022.
About this event
Since 2015, Professor Kevin Daniels has led a team focussed on Work and Learning, funded by the ESRC to look at workplace wellbeing and productivity. Drawing on findings from quantitative, qualitative and case research studies, the team have produced insight into what employers can do if they want to have it all: good employee wellbeing alongside improved performance and productivity. The team’s research has highlighted the importance of good management, dialogue, safety net provision and authenticity. It has also offers insights into the business case for different types of employee wellbeing interventions.
About the speakers
Professor Kevin Daniels is an occupational psychologist at Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia and was project lead for the Work and Learning Stream of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing (2015 – 2021). For over the past twenty years, he has led projects on workplace wellbeing, including those in safety critical environments, funded by the Health and Safety Executive and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council amongst others. A Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Academy of Social Sciences and Royal Society of Arts, he is also a member of the British Standards Institute HS1 committee focused on workplace health and safety and the British Psychological Society’s Workplace Health and Wellbeing group.
Professor Sara Connolly is Professor of Personnel Economics in Norwich Business School at UEA. Her research interests are in gender and the labour market. She was part of the What Works Wellbeing Evidence Programme for Work and Wellbeing and is now a part of the team at UEA working with RAND Europe exploring ‘Practices and Combinations of Practices for Health and Wellbeing at Work’.
Dr Helen Fitzhugh of Norwich Business School, UEA is passionate about making organisations better for the people who work in them. As well as being a researcher with the UEA team, she gathers the best academic evidence she can find on workplace wellbeing and productivity and distils it down into practical information and resources for knowledge exchange. Helen has worked across the public, private and voluntary sectors, so brings with her an understanding of how to adapt complex research findings so that they make sense to real life workers and managers in a variety of different settings.
Michael Whitmore is a research leader at RAND Europe, primarily developing initiatives and research into health and work wellbeing.His career spans more than twenty-five years across health and social care with the last nine largely dedicated to health and work. He has held roles that include programme director to Dame Carol Black’s UK cross-government health and work team, developing fit for work services, as well as international product director of Wellbeing for Optum, part of the UnitedHealth Group. He has also led global digital and big-data platforms, population health projects in inter-systemic behaviour change, delayed transfers of care and health and social care integration as well as development of a national mental health wellbeing programme to the UK construction industry.
Will Phillips (he/him) is an analyst at RAND Europe working in the area of health and wellbeing research. His work has spanned a range of topics including transport, education and health and wellbeing. His primary research interest is in mental health and workpace wellbeing research. He has also developed expertise in methodologies including literature reviews, interview and workshop facilitation, future scenarios, discrete choice modelling and wider econometric methods.