The document summarizes findings from a study on managing mental wellbeing in the EU telecommunications industry. It identifies work factors associated with impaired and enhanced mental wellbeing through a systematic literature review. It also describes good practices identified from interviews with eight telecom companies, including measuring wellbeing, organizational interventions, person-directed support, return to work programs, and ensuring organizational justice. The goal is to provide guidance to improve mental health across the telecommunications sector.

1. WORKING FOR A HEALTHY FUTURE
"Good Work Good Health" - Identifying
Good Practice in Managing Mental
Wellbeing in the EU Telecoms Industry
Joanne Crawford, Hilary Cowie, Richard Graveling,
Phil George and Ken Dixon
INSTITUTE OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE . Edinburgh . UK www.iom-world.org

2. Summary of Presentation
• Aims
• Methods
• Systematic Review
• Data collection
• Findings
• Development of Guidance
• Conclusions
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3. GWGH Project
• The work was carried out on behalf of
• ETNO (European Telecommunication Network Operators
Association) and
• the Trade Unions federation, Uni-europa
• With financial support from the European
Commission
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4. Aims
• The aim of the study was to gather
evidence on good practice in
managing mental wellbeing in the
industry and from this to feed into the
development of guidelines to be
disseminated across the
telecommunications sector.
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5. Systematic Review
• A systematic review of secondary research was
carried out to answer the following questions:
• What are the work factors that are associated with impaired
mental wellbeing?
• What work factors are associated with enhanced mental
wellbeing?
• What work arrangements can mitigate or facilitate return to work
for individuals who have poor mental wellbeing?
• Searches carried out on 17 electronic databases and 35 websites
• In total 39 publications included and these were rated for quality
using the three-star system
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6. Systematic Review Findings
• Work factors associated with impaired mental
wellbeing
• Demands and controls (***)
• Low job satisfaction (***)
• Lack of manager support (***)
• High emotional demands, an undervalued social
position, monotony, poor communication (***)
• Role conflict and ambiguity, career stagnation,
home/work conflict, tight deadlines, poor
management style (*)
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7. Systematic Review Findings
• Work Factors associated with enhanced mental
wellbeing
• Positive impact of summer vacation (***)
• Increasing job control, improving task design (**)
• Good work relationships, clear roles and having a
participatory approach (**)
• Multi-modal interventions that include support, social
and coping skills training (**)
• Compressed working week (**)
• Flexible working, improving job satisfaction and valuing
the workforce (*)
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8. Systematic Review Findings
• Work factors that mitigate or enhance return-
to-work for individuals with poor mental
wellbeing
• These have the potential to be positive
• Phased return-to-work
• Psychological rehabilitation
• Maintaining regular contact with the employee
• Problem identification and workplace
adjustments
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9. Systematic Review Findings
• Evidence Gaps
• Lack of high quality primary research
• Lack of quantification or evaluation of the impact
of workplace interventions
• Little evidence-based guidance available
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10. Development of Interview
• On completion of the systematic review a
template of questions was developed to use with
companies covering the following areas
• Measurement of mental wellbeing
• Organisational interventions for mental wellbeing
• Person-directed interventions for mental wellbeing
• Return-to-work after sickness absence
• Working Time
• Organisational Justice
• Managers and supervisors
• Training and new technology
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11. Companies Interviewed
• Eight companies agreed to take part including:
• Belgacom
• BT
• Deutsche Telekom
• France Télècom - Orange
• Portugal Telecom
• Romtelecom
• Telefonica
• Telenor
• Interviews carried out with stakeholders in each
company and union representatives
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12. What were the good practices identified?
• Measurement of mental wellbeing
• Mental wellbeing assessed by examination, risk assessment
and or questionnaire survey.
• Assessment tools developed based on recognised models of
workplace stress including demands and control at work.
• Where different groups such as call centre workers or field
engineers show poor mental wellbeing, this can provide a
focus for intervention
• Induction processes had been put in place for new
employees in relation to their role, training, how and where to
access support
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13. What were the good practices identified?
• Measurement of mental wellbeing
• If individuals feel they have role conflicts, role ambiguity,
poor work-life balance, too tight deadlines or
underutilisation then procedures are in place to help.
• Contact was maintained with individuals working outside
the office (Field Technicians and Home Workers)
• Procedures were in place for any incidents of bullying,
mobbing, violence or aggression against employees
• Discrimination was not acceptable at any level and
procedures are in place to deal with such incidents.
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14. What were the good practices identified?
• Organisational Level Interventions
• The use of risk assessment or toolkits to evaluate the impact
of change management
• Campaigns on mental wellbeing across companies
• Use of the intranet and company newsletters to advertise
initiatives
• The involvement of all stakeholders in the development of
organisational interventions
• Encouraging people to increase levels of physical activity
• Evaluation of levels of engagement within the workforce
• Access to senior management
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15. What were the good practices identified?
• Person-directed Interventions
• A reporting system in place for individuals who are having
problems that is both accessible and used by employees
• Immediate access to help and support
• Help and support available whether the source of the
problem was at work or at home
• Recognition of good work through either bonus systems or
highlighting of an individual or team achievement
• Having a code of conduct for individuals to work to that
encompasses the values of the company
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16. What were the good practices identified?
• Return to work after absence
• Contact being made as soon as possible between the
company and the employee
• Having a management system in place for individuals who
take frequent short-term sickness absence
• For long term absence maintaining contact with the individual
for the duration of the illness (where local legislation allows
this)
• Offering continued support to individuals on return to work
after long term absence
• Allowing time for individuals to come back to full capacity or
using a graduated return to work.
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17. What were the good practices identified?
• Working Time
• Where possible allowing flexible working practices
• Monitoring levels of overtime and ensuring this is
not excessive
• Having annual leave and ensuring employees take
leave
• Where individuals become ill on annual leave,
recording this as sick leave not annual leave
• Having rest breaks built into the working day and
ensuring breaks are taken
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18. What were the good practices identified?
• Organisational Justice
• Clear and transparent recruitment and promotion processes
agreed by all stakeholders
• The use of talent management programmes to improve
retention and development of employees
• Clear appraisal processes which allow training needs to be
identified and goals to be set for the individual employee;
with an opportunity for appeal
• The use of job descriptions and job families to allow role
clarity
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19. What were the good practices identified?
• Organisational Justice
• Consulting with employees to evaluate decision
making and having routes to bring any complaints such
as local human resources
• Dealing with employees with respect and fairness
(dignity?)
• Having a communications strategy including both
electronic and paper based media
• Ensuring a top down approach for communications that
comes down to every employee
• The use of mediation where it is perceived the wrong
decisions have been made
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20. What were the good practices identified?
• Managers and Supervisors
• Employing managers who have both business
skills and people skills
• Training managers to identify poor identify poor
mental health within their teams
• Giving professional support to managers when
dealing with team members with poor mental
wellbeing
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21. What were the good practices identified?
• Training and New Technology
• Having access to training and identifying training
needs for all level of employees
• Ensuring line managers encourage and are not a
block to training opportunities
• Access to specific training for different groups
• Ensuring adequate training and support for new
product launches
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22. Evaluation of outcomes of interventions
• A problem common to a lot of occupational
health/ergonomic/health promotion initiatives – it
doesn’t always happen
• A need to build evaluation of effectiveness in over time – one
example within the visits
• Helps develop the business case and to show something is
working (or not)
• One advantage of taking a sector approach is that
people can see interventions that work in their field
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23. Development of Guidance
• Guidance available
in 12 languages
• Project report
available in 4
languages
• Evaluation of the
good practice
guidance ongoing
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24. Project website available at…
Details of the project are on our website…
http://www.iom-world.org/research/goodworkgoodhealth.
And the project website
http://www.gwgh.eu/
Thank you for listening
Joanne.crawford@iom-world.org
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