Towards better health in female dominated workplaces: organizational factors, initiatives and political decisions in municipal administration

Research problem and specific questionsAdults spend a considerable part of their waking hours in the workplace, which means that it is often singled out as an important arena for public health interventions.

Nevertheless, the workplace has even greater potential to influence public health: the organization and design of the work itself can contribute to health  – or ill-health.

Female dominated municipal administration stands out due to major problems with work-related ill-health which is rooted in problematic working conditions.

The purpose of this program is to address ill-health in the female dominated municipal sector by mapping ill-health in occupations and at workplaces and by exploring organizational efforts intending to address its root causes. Data and method and plan for program realisationThe program consists of five projects.

The first project uses longitudinal annual register data and quantitative methods to examine the association between female-dominated occupations, female-dominated workplaces, and sickness absence in the municipality sector and how different factors mediate these associations.

The second project deals with governance linked to employees and first-line managers in the municipality and the consequences of increased autonomy in connection with trust-based governance. This part will be based on two questionnaire surveys that are designed based on qualitative interviews. The survey data will be analysed using quantitative methods.

The third is a collaborative project with municipalities where organizational measures to achieve good health through a better balance between work requirements and resources are created and evaluated using a multi-method approach including both qualitative and quantitative methods.

In the fourth project, an experiment examines politicians’ decisions that affect resource allocation in the municipality. This project too has a mixed methods-approach incompassing both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Finally, an exploratory project is carried out based on new questions that arise by combining results from the various projects.

Relevance and utilisationThe program is closely linked to the national overarching goal for public health, i.e. to create societal conditions for good and equal health in the entire population.

The program´s research questions are clearly linked to four of the eight intermediate sub-goals for public health.The unique contribution of the program is that the research question is tackled across several system levels – from the labour market and societal perspective to the decision-making and organizational perspective using an interdisciplinary approach including the disciplines of public health, work life studies, business administration, psychology, sociology and economics.

Through the project’s cross-disciplinary approach, the goal is ground-breaking new knowledge with a major impact on both policy and practice.