Developing Compassionate Workplaces in Europe for the digital and green work environment to protect employees’ mental and physical health and wellbeing

EU-CoWork aims 1) to explore and understand the influence of changing workplace organization due to the twin transitions on well-being, performance, job quality, and work culture for employees confronted with serious illness, family caregiving, death, dying and loss (EoL experiences) and their colleagues; and 2) to develop and evaluate tailored Compassionate Workplaces Programs (CWPs) as health promotion strategies to maintain and support employee health and wellbeing in the work environment, across different national and labour contexts in Europe. The core of this project is a 4-country cross-national mixed-methods intervention study with an embedded process and impact evaluation. The project consists of 2 separate studies that feed into each other: a) an international co-creative and developmental evaluation of tailored CWPs, and b) an international mixed methods process and impact evaluation combining a timed series of quantitative cross-sectional panel surveys, qualitative interviews and fieldwork, and policy document analysis. Tailored CWPs will be developed in 12 European workplaces. EU-CoWork will provide findings about workplace compassion and mental and physical health and wellbeing of European employees in several working sectors, and the relationship between workplace characteristics and compassion at work and the health and wellbeing of employees confronted (directly or indirectly) with EoL experiences. The project will collect data about the relationship between employees’ EoL experiences, the company’s responses to these experiences and company and employee performance, and about the variability in workplace policies in Europe that address such risk factors. EU-CoWork will thereby offer insights and building blocks needed to create work environments that ensure adequate support and policy and that are tailored to counter-balance experiences that may otherwise exacerbate the risk for adverse mental health and wellbeing outcomes for employees.