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September 2, 2015

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Remote workers: Out of sight, out of mind?

Computer mouse on grass

The existing leadership frameworks covering occupational safety and health may not be applicable for distributed or remote workers. Karina Nielsen outlines plans for further research.

In 2008, nearly half the Western European workforce (48.7 per cent of over 120 million workers) fell under the category of distributed (or remote) workers, and this figure is rising. Distributed workers are people who work autonomously and remotely from their main organisation’s locations or operations for at least a proportion of their work-time. Common examples include homeworkers, drivers, construction and maintenance workers, community nurses and police officers – but there are many more. These are the workers we focus on in our research, which is a collaboration between the University of East Anglia and Affinity Health at Work.

Main research questions
Current occupational health and safety leadership frameworks are developed based on the assumption that leaders have frequent face-to-face interaction with their employees. The questions we ask are: can we easily apply these frameworks to occupational safety and health (OSH) to distributed workers? Or do we need to develop tailored frameworks that organisations can apply to ensure good occupational safety and health among distributed workers? Can OSH practitioners deploy appropriate frameworks and models in distributed working contexts to ensure effective OSH leadership from line managers?

The first step
We first conducted a literature review to find out what knowledge is already available. Highlights from the literature review on the factors that are important to ensure good OSH include:

  • A good leader-distributed worker relationship is important to good OSH and wellbeing.
  • Leaders need to be aware of promoting a good safety climate from a distance to ensure good OSH.
  • ‘Transformational’ type leadership motivates safe behaviours and wellbeing.
  • Motivation and motivational strategies such as planning and motivating language support safe behaviours and wellbeing.

The next steps
In the next step, we are interviewing experts and practitioners with experience in occupational safety and health management among distributed workers. The aim of this stage is to identify which systems and leadership behaviours are perceived as successful in ensuring good occupational safety and health among distributed workers.

In the third step, we will bring together data from our literature review and interviews to develop a questionnaire. We will use this questionnaire to identify the best leadership frameworks for distributed worker contexts. We will also explore how such frameworks can be used by OSH practitioners to support line management to enhance distributed workers’ OSH behaviour and wellbeing.

Translating the findings into practice
We will use our research findings to develop an online toolkit, including self- and other- diagnostics for good OSH leadership, case studies to illustrate good practice, advice on how to develop action plans to improve OSH leadership practices, and help for OSH practitioners in identifying the barriers and facilitators of successfully changing OSH leadership practices at the line level.

Other outputs
The project will be completed in September 2016. A number of research publications will be produced and we will produce a report for IOSH.

If you would like to be part of the LinkedIn group or participate in the research, please contact Professor Karina Nielsen, principal investigator, at: [email protected]

Karina Nielsen is a professor at the Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia

What makes us susceptible to burnout?

In this episode  of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.

We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.

stress

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