Workplace Health and Wellbeing (Distance Learning) MSc/PGDip/PGCert

To effectively manage workplace health and wellbeing we need a shared understanding of these concepts. This module explores the definition and measurement of workplace, health, and wellbeing. Approaches to the identification of new and emerging risks and opportunities are considered alongside strategies for the prioritisation and targeting of workplace health and wellbeing activities.

Work-related stress is a leading cause of ill-health and impaired organisational effectiveness. This module establishes the scale of the problem and the imperative for its management, considers leading theoretical models that provide an explanatory framework for the causes and consequences of work-related stress, and examines the application of these models in the workplace.

Attendance is fundamental to organisational effectiveness. But what is meant by attendance in the contemporary workplace and do our traditional conceptualisations suffice? This module considers sickness absence, presenteeism, and leaveism within the attendance ‘jigsaw’, and explores evidence-based approaches to employee rehabilitation following absence.

To gain the MSc in Workplace Health and Wellbeing, you'll need to conduct this applied research project that spans the entirety of the second year of study. Quantitative and mixed methods projects are supervised by Jonathan Houdmont, while Amanda Griffiths supervises qualitative (interview and focus group) project.

This module provides the opportunity to apply skills and knowledge acquired during the course to the task of designing, conducting, and writing-up a piece of research that has the potential to make a positive impact on workplace health and wellbeing. Most students undertake a study in their own place of work or that of a customer or colleague. 

Students without access to an organisation typically use their social media contacts to obtain a participant sample. It is not uncommon for students to issue an invitation to participate in an online survey to members of specific groups via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. For instance, a student recently posted an invitation to participate in a survey concerning strategies to promote job satisfaction in UK midwives and received almost 500 completed surveys within a week!

Projects cover an enormous range of topics, reflecting students’ interests and professional focus. Projects typically involve either an online or paper-based quantitative and/or qualitative survey. Some projects involve in-person or video-conference qualitative interviews or focus groups.

Publications

The best projects are jointly prepared by the student and their supervisor for publication in academic journals. Examples include

• What does a single-item measure of job stressfulness assess?
• UK postal workers’ sun safety knowledge and practices
• Acceptance of repeat worksite HIV voluntary counselling and testing in a rural South African factory
• Overtime and psychological wellbeing among Chinese officer workers
• UK postal delivery workers’ occupational sun safety: Using behaviour change theories to identify intervention pathways
• Sun safety in construction: A UK intervention study

The world of work is constantly evolving, as are the risks and opportunities to workforce health and wellbeing. This module considers a range of contemporary issues facing workplace health and wellbeing practitioners and explores the role of theory and scientific evidence in understanding and managing these. The module assessment allows students to focus on a workplace health and wellbeing issue related to their own interests or professional activities.

The development of knowledge and skills relating to research methods and data analysis is central to the Workplace Health and Wellbeing course. This module seeks to foster a community of research practitioners who are able to collect, analyse, interpret, and draw informed conclusions on qualitative and quantitative data in order to make recommendations on actions to protect and promote workers’ health and wellbeing. Teaching on this module recognises that these concepts are, for many, new and no prior knowledge is assumed.

A healthy workforce is a productive workforce, and the workplace provides an ideal context to promote health. This module considers the business case for workplace health promotion, introduces contemporary psychological theories of behaviour change, and explores how these theories provide an understanding of workers’ behaviours and inform the design of interventions to encourage healthy choices.