Viewing archives for Policy And Interventions

From Formal Rights to Capabilities: Employee Voice and Well-being under Right-to-Disconnect Legislation

Cherise Regier

Abstract

The expansion of digitally mediated work has intensified concerns about employee availability and working time, particularly in contexts where workers have limited capacity to shape their working conditions. In response, several European countries have introduced right-to-disconnect (R2D) legislation to formally recognize employees’ right to disengage from work-related digital communications outside working hours. Rather than functioning as a prescriptive and uniformly enforced statutory right, R2D legislation often relies on workplace interpretation, negotiation, and implementation. This institutional openness provides a useful opportunity to examine how employee voice operates under conditions of digital connectivity, conceptualizing voice as a capability that enables workers to translate formal rights into meaningful control over their time. Using a difference-in-differences design and focusing on European workers in teleworkable occupations with high exposure to R2D provisions, the analysis shows that well-being improvements following the introduction of R2D legislation are concentrated among workers with greater employee voice.

Is Europe a laggard? Comparing the EU and the US using an interdisciplinary well-being framework

Annegeke Jansen, Ranran Wang, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Paul Behrens and Rutger Hoekstra

Abstract

Well-being is increasingly recognized as a more meaningful measure of societal progress than economic output, yet most international comparisons continue to emphasize economic indicators. This focus has reinforced the perception that Europe is lagging behind the United States, with the productivity gap shaping the European Commission’s recent competitiveness agenda. Here, we compare European and American development from 1990–2023 using an interdisciplinary well-being framework that integrates five scientific schools of thought. We find that while the US increasingly outperformed the EU on productivity and income, the EU caught up in terms of various well-being indicators, including life satisfaction and education, while increasingly outperforming the US in life expectancy and safety. Europe also exhibits more equitable well-being outcomes and achieves them at lower environmental cost. However, in both regions, the conditions underpinning future well-being are under increasing pressure. These results challenge the dominance of economic metrics in evaluating progress and emphasize the need for inclusive development strategies that place sustainable well-being at their core.

There’s something unique about eating together that’s good for us

BBC Future

Arguably the strongest evidence comes from the World Happiness Report – a yearly analysis of wellbeing based on a global survey from the opinion polling company Gallup. In 2024, the company was sponsored by the Japanese food manufacturer Ajinomoto to add a section on people’s eating habits, which included the following questions:

Thinking about the last 7 days …
(1) On how many days did you eat lunch with someone you know?
(2) On how many days did you eat dinner with someone you know?”

“My eyes lit up when I saw,” De Neve says, who co-authored a chapter on the importance of commensality in the latest World Happiness Report. “We’re looking at about 150,000 individuals around the world who responded to that question.”

De Neve’s team found that the more meals that people shared with others, the higher they scored on standard measures of emotional wellbeing, with quite astonishing consistency. “It was as predictive of someone’s life satisfaction as their employment status and your relative income,” he says – two factors that are known to be enormously important for wellbeing.

2601 | Reduce or Compress? Panel Evidence on Working Time Arrangements and Worker Wellbeing

William Fleming

The 4-day work week (4DW) has garnered much attention following recent high-profile trials; whereas the compressed work week (CWW) has made a concurrent comeback. The rise of two comparable working time arrangements (WTA) raises the question: which is best for workers? To compare, this article uses representative panel data from the UK observing both WTAs. Results unsurprisingly corroborate the 4DW is good for workers. In sharp contrast, the CWW is associated with declines in women’s wellbeing. These possible harms are alleviated when coinciding with ‘a lot’ of schedule control, demonstrating the importance of worker control for individuals utilising WTAs. Yet these differences signal significant gender trade-offs. Overall, theory should not be so ambivalent about wellbeing and working time: working less is better. For organisational and public policy, divergent results emphasise equivalating working time reduction and compression is unhelpful for guiding interventions which support worker wellbeing.

Sharing meals is associated with greater wellbeing

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Andrew Dugan, Micah Kaats and Alberto Prati

Abstract

Although social connections are important drivers of wellbeing, and sharing meals is a nearly universal practice, the relationship between sharing meals and wellbeing remains underexplored. In Study 1, using novel data from Gallup surveys in 142 countries and territories (2022–2023), we use the frequency of meal sharing as a global measure of social connections, and investigate its relationship with subjective wellbeing. We find a significant, positive relationship in almost all world regions. The number of shared meals explains as much variation in wellbeing as some key socioeconomic indicators, such as income or unemployment. In Study 2, we use data from the American Time Use Survey (2003–2023) to document changes in meal sharing in the United States over time. We find clear evidence that, with every passing year, Americans are dining alone more and more often, particularly the younger generations. Using Day Reconstruction Method data, we show that Americans who eat at least one meal with others report higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress, pain and sadness on that day. Finally, we point to a number of promising avenues for future research and discuss implications for policy.

Does happiness spread within organizations? Evidence from a field experiment in Norway

Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild A. Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam and Alberto Prati

Abstract

We report the results from a large field experiment that tests if happiness spreads within an organizational setting, as predicted by the emotional contagion hypothesis. Although some studies have supported this hypothesis, no well-powered randomized controlled trial has ever tested it in the field. In collaboration with the Norwegian Armed Forces, we randomly assign over 1500 recruits to rooms during eight-week boot camps. Some recruits live with relatively happier peers while others live with relatively unhappier ones. We find no evidence of happiness convergence at the room level and reject even small contagion effects. We show that the null result is not explained by excessive stability in happiness, and prior studies in the same setting show that peer effects emerge for some non-emotional attitudes. These results call for a reconsideration of the presumed ubiquity of happiness spillovers, with subsequent implications for well-being models and policies.

Why and How to Embed Coproduction in Your Organisation

Mark Fabian, William Fleming and Nancy Hawthorn

Abstract

Coproduction is gaining traction across the UK’s third and public sectors. However, while many organisations aspire to coproduce, fewer succeed in embedding it into everyday practice. This report draws on interviews with 34 coproduction practitioners, alongside academic literature and the authors’ own experience coproducing. The aim is a practical guide for those seeking to make coproduction a structure in their organisation: what coproduction is, why it matters, and how to do it. Our audience is principally practitioners within organisations, but we hope experts by experience can also use it to advocate for their own involvement. Coproduction is the most substantive form of involvement, underpinned by meaningful power-sharing. Coproduction refers to a wide range of participatory activities, across any stage of service, policy, or product development, where practitioners, technical specialists, and lived experience experts (LEX) work together to produce value. Crucially, it requires that those affected by decisions have real authority in shaping them.

An accessible version of this report (.docx) is available for download.

Depoliticised labour reform: Policy discourse analysis of workplace wellbeing

William J. Fleming

Abstract

Critical management scholars now frequently designate workplace wellbeing as a managerial technology of control. Among several points of criticism, organisational wellbeing solutions are viewed as ineffective, instrumental, discriminatory, individualistic, and coercive. Yet, increasingly, workers’ wellbeing is an explicit public policy concern enacted prior to and alongside organisational settings. Identifying workplace wellbeing as such can expand extant critique to recognise it as a hegemonic project, and, specifically, a discourse of depoliticised labour reform. This argument is abductively developed through analysis of a resource hub backed by the UK government, using the What’s the Problem Represented to Be approach as a guide, and combining both qualitative and computational methods. I show wellbeing is problematised in four ways: individual, economic, cultural, and voluntary. Each of these problematisations deploys depoliticising strategies which reproduce dominant employment relations. The workplace wellbeing policy discourse is a sincere, corporate-led attempt to improve workers’ experiences of employment, but through strategies that are limited by an avoidance of contestation and regulation, as well as a mystification of both the harms of work, critiques of social justice, and more proactive solutions which would engage with working conditions. Therefore, workplace wellbeing discourse is both a product and continuation of the liberalisation and depoliticisation of employment relations.

Ecological-collective-flourishing (e-co-flourishing): a framework to guide innovation and research

Shannon Maloney, Joseph Moore, Katrin Wilhelm, Jesus Montero-Marin, Verena Hinze, Anne Maj van der Velden, Tessa Lomax, Haiou Zhu, Madeline Reinecke, Edmond Awad, Joseph Scott Boyle, William Fleming, Laura Taylor, Matthew Broome, Christopher Thorogood, Yadvinder Malhi, Kearnan Myall, Ilina Singh and Willem Kuyken

Abstract

Converging ecological and social crises have exposed the limits of prevailing models of human progress, highlighting the need for more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches to advancing wellbeing and flourishing across human and non-human life. In this Personal View, we propose an ecological-collective-flourishing (e-co-flourishing) approach, whereby one’s own human flourishing is pursued along with that of natural ecosystems and their collective and individual constituents. We offer a heuristic translational framework that includes a methodological approach; guiding principles; and proposed programme theory in terms of hypothesised outcomes, pathways of change (mechanisms), key contextual factors (moderators), and intervention characteristics. This framework aims to bridge theory to real-world applications of e-co-flourishing interventions that are effective, scalable, and promote change through targeted mechanisms of action. We present Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy-Balanced Living for Us and the Earth’s Ocean (MBCT-BLUE) as an illustrative application of this framework to outline how the framework can be used to identify, refine, develop, and evaluate interventions with e-co-flourishing potential. We also provide definitions of key conceptual terms and proxy measurements. Practitioners, researchers, and decision makers working at the interface of mental health, public health, sustainability, and planetary health can use this framework and its resources to guide emerging research and innovation.

Mechanisms underpinning flourishing at the interface of humans and other natural entities: an umbrella review

Shannon Maloney, Thomas Henning, Haiou Zhu, Benjamin Martin, Verena Hinze, Jesus Montero-Marin, Anne Maj van der Velden, Joseph Moore, Katrin Wilhelm, Tessa Lomax, Madeline G Reinecke, Edmond Awad, Joseph Boyle, William Fleming, Laura Taylor, Matthew Broome, Christopher Thorogood, Gaia Scerif, Yadvinder Malhi, Ilina Singh and Willem Kuyken

Abstract

Ecological-collective-flourishing (e-co-flourishing) describes the interconnected flourishing of human and non-human natural entities. Despite existing conceptual frameworks, translation into practice remains inadequate owing to insufficient synthesis of empirically tested mechanisms driving change across human and ecological systems. We conducted an umbrella review of systematic reviews examining mechanisms at the e-co-flourishing interface. Searches of seven databases and four grey literature sources identified nine eligible reviews. Evidence supported several cross-domain mechanisms, including psychological (eg, attention restoration and reduced stress), social (eg, cohesion and contact), physical (eg, activity), and environmental pathways (eg, reduced stressors and enhanced environmental quality). Psychological mechanisms showed the most consistent support, whereas evidence for other mechanism domains was mixed. Evidence for causality was weak and largely derived from cross-sectional and qualitative studies, and no reviews examined reciprocal mechanisms influencing both human and non-human flourishing. Future research should prioritise rigorous designs, theory-driven testing, and replication to strengthen evidence for equitable and sustainable e-co-flourishing pathways.