HELIOS-VUB Chair for Mental Wellbeing at Work

The HELIOS-VUB Chair for Mental Wellbeing at Work aims to strengthen worker well-being by developing an innovative, multi-level (workers, leaders, and organisations), and evidence-based framework to guide prevention and intervention strategies at work. Mental health in the workplace is facing growing pressures. Yet, there has been little progress in developing effective (preventive) workplaces policies that address the conditions that create these pressures. Studies point out that particularly the one-sided concentration on ‘tertiary prevention’ and re-integration is problematic and destined to fail and that a road towards improvement lays with primary prevention (i.e., making sure that work environments become healthier places (primary prevention), and secondary prevention (i.e., preventing that people with early symptoms dropout from their jobs).

This 5-year project aims to 1) establish a high-quality prospective career panel serving as a longitudinal reference database combining registry and survey information to study determinants of mental health and work in Belgium. 2) design a methodological template for developing, implementing, and evaluating workplace interventions aimed at the prevention of psychosocial risks. 3) apply that methodological template to concrete cases, by designing, co-creating, and implementing workplace interventions in social profit and for-profit organisations. 4) develop personalized interventions through a novel conceptualization of burnout. 5) examine facilitating and hindering leadership styles.