Job crafting for people with health conditions and disabilities

In this edition of our Evolve podcast, Dr Helen Fitzhugh of the University of East Anglia speaks with Professor Adam Whitworth, Professor of Employment Policy, Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde Business School. The conversation covers Adam's research on policies that support people to move into or maintain good quality, well-matched paid work, particularly people with health conditions, disabilities or complex disadvantages. Adam is leading the WISHES project - potentially the largest ever trial of job crafting. More information can be found here for employers interested in finding out more about the trial: Employers – WISHES: Workplace Intervention for Sustainable Health and Employment Support

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:28:15

Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free, evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org.

00:00:28:17 - 00:00:55:12

Helen Fitzhugh

Hi, I'm Dr Helen Fitzhugh of the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing team at the University of East Anglia. Today I'm speaking with Professor Adam Whitworth, Professor of Employment Policy, Scottish Centre for Employment Research at Strathclyde Business School. Today we'll be talking about Adam's research on policies that support people to move into or maintain good quality, well-matched paid work, particularly people with health conditions, disabilities or complex disadvantages.

00:00:55:14 - 00:00:56:21

Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome, Adam.

00:00:56:23 - 00:00:59:11

Adam Whitworth

Thanks so much for the invitation. Lovely to be here.

00:00:59:13 - 00:01:06:24

Helen Fitzhugh

Thank you for coming. Could you start off by telling us a little bit about your career journey, and what's led you to be interested in workplace wellbeing?

00:01:07:01 - 00:01:36:22

Adam Whitworth

So I've always been interested in public policy and employment policy more specifically inside that. So I did a kind of politics and economics undergraduate and then focused on public policy after that, and then moved into the world of academic research, focusing around public policies and my interest throughout, even since the early days of my undergraduate even, was around labour market policy and labour market activation.

00:01:36:24 - 00:02:12:00

Adam Whitworth

And that's something that has stuck with me, for a long time now. 20, 25 years or so. And if you think about key UK challenges, both on the out of work side, on the in-work side, issues around, work, health are absolutely central to that. And so the nature of public policy is both to support people into work and then when they're in work to help them be their - as maximally satisfied and productive as they can be, were naturally part of the kind of research journey that's evolved over time for me.

00:02:12:02 - 00:02:20:03

Helen Fitzhugh

Right. And you've mentioned there sort of 20, 25 years of interest in this. So can you give us a quick flavour of the projects you've been involved in?

00:02:20:05 - 00:02:46:09

Adam Whitworth

Yeah, I guess like all careers, they evolve over time. So I've been very fortunate to be involved in lots of policy facing work as well. I'm quite an applied academic, so I guess there were 2 or 3 that I would focus on. So there's a period of time when I was seconded out into regional government, working with different mayoral combined authorities around essentially the local integration on the commissioner side of how do we better connect the employment and the health system.

00:02:46:09 - 00:03:14:22

Adam Whitworth

So working with local authorities and with mayoral areas and with NHS partners to try and better integrate at a local level, the work and health offer to residents, you know, to, to businesses and to workers. So we created new governance mechanisms inside local authorities called local integration boards, that help areas to better connect services, budgets, to to deliver better support for residents and for workers.

00:03:14:22 - 00:03:37:07

Adam Whitworth

And so that was a that was a great project. From a research point of view and in terms of a practice point of view, and then for the last decade or so, I did a lot of work around something called supported employment, which is, a model of employment support for people with health conditions, disabilities and complex disadvantages to support them into paid work, into well matched employment.

00:03:37:12 - 00:04:02:12

Adam Whitworth

There's different flavours of that, and that's become a really, significant part of the UK employment policy landscape, and particularly with a focus on health and disability. And that's for both for people who are out of work, but also an offer to employers and to workers, you know, how do we if we if we step back and think about the employment policy landscape, we focus, we tend to focus in terms of government policy.

00:04:02:12 - 00:04:30:07

Adam Whitworth

Much more on the out of work and particularly economic inactivity is a really pressing issue presently for government. Less so on the offer to employers. I think that is a policy gap in the UK context, and some of the work I've been doing around supported employment is both an in-work offer to workers and to their employers, who are struggling from things like health related, sickness absence, at risk of dropping out of work, maybe not as productive as they could be or would want to be.

00:04:30:09 - 00:04:48:18

Adam Whitworth

As well as the out of work side. And that's been, again, from a research point of view, led a large National Institute of Health and Care research project around that. And then also that pulls through into policy work and practice work. And I think for me, that interface around work and health between research and policy has been a really I've been very fortunate.

00:04:48:18 - 00:04:52:18

Adam Whitworth

It’s been a really rich part of my career journey to date.

00:04:52:20 - 00:05:10:15

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. And you've actually built up an expertise in an area that has become very pressing and very timely for the UK at the moment. Haven’t you, I mean, with all sorts of figures on, on higher amounts of absence from work or long term conditions. So, you know, sort of hitting the right time with this research as well.

00:05:10:17 - 00:05:57:24

Adam Whitworth

I mean, these issues, issues around the relationship between work and health, whether it's in terms of economic inactivity, or in terms of in-work productivity, sickness absence, have been there for a long time and have been significant for a very long time. They certainly, I think you're right to say, have moved really to the centre stage, almost of of some of this post Brexit where you haven't got and can't rely on the same immigration, labour supply flow and the costs to to employers, to businesses, as well as to the Treasury in terms of health related worklessness and have lower than, potential productivity and sickness absence.

00:05:58:01 - 00:06:24:03

Adam Whitworth

Those costs are growing at a rapid rate. And so, yeah, it's certainly centre stage. Now if you I mean, you know, when you talk to policy stakeholders, and they talk about the government's, priorities around growth, around productivity, where we know the UK has for a long time been lagging around debt and fiscal sustainability, work and health is a recurrent theme.

00:06:24:03 - 00:06:52:03

Adam Whitworth

So certainly, I mean, you and I are clearly working together on the WISHES project, but this is absolutely, critical in terms of not just individuals, you know, but it’s supporting people to live the life that they want to live and deserve to live, to have the opportunities to be healthy at work, to have a career that’s fulfilling where they can be maximally productive, to grow their quality of life, is also critical for the kind of macro economy.

00:06:52:05 - 00:07:07:14

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. No. Absolutely. And you mentioned WISHES there. So, yes, we are currently working together on a project you're leading called WISHES: Workplace Intervention for Sustainable Health and Employment Support. Could you explain a little bit about the project and what we're hoping to achieve?

00:07:07:16 - 00:07:35:21

Adam Whitworth

Absolutely. So WISHES is, we think the world's largest ever randomized control trial of job crafting, focussed particularly, to support workers with health conditions, disabilities, other workplace challenges. We feel like there needs some extra support to retain their work, to be more satisfied in their work, to engage better with their work, to be more productive in their work.

00:07:35:23 - 00:08:25:14

Adam Whitworth

What is job crafting? So job crafting is, in summary, a bottom up, informal way of upskilling, growing the capabilities and the confidence of workers themselves to proactively identify, seek, shape changes to their job tasks, their job roles, and workplace environment the way that they're working. Perhaps the distribution of work amongst their team and colleagues in collaboration with their employer and line manager, and an informal bottom up, way rather than a top down, if you like, organizational say, HR policy to support workplace wellbeing or workplace productivity, this is about growing and empowering and upskilling workers to proactively seek and do that in the workplace.

00:08:25:16 - 00:08:44:13

Adam Whitworth

Like I say, we think it the largest ever trial of job crafting, particularly focused on health and disability at work. Really exciting. We've got a positive, on balance, positive evidence base of job crafting over about 15 years or so. And what wishes will do is trial it in that really key population group of workers with health conditions / disabilities.

00:08:44:19 - 00:09:09:09

Adam Whitworth

We know the UK challenges in that space and what that means for workers as well as employers, and the cost to employers of that, but also what it means for workers so that they can flourish, at work. So to be able to do that at the scale that we're doing it, a trial of around about 600 workers across all sorts of different types of organizations in a really rigorous evaluation framework.

00:09:09:15 - 00:09:33:02

Adam Whitworth

Now the ambition and the potential of WISHES is to really deliver, a step change in the evidence base around not just job crafting, but actually job crafting as a potential part of the UK policy landscape and employer landscape to better support workers, particularly workers with, health conditions, disabilities or other workplace challenges.

00:09:33:04 - 00:09:54:24

Helen Fitzhugh

And that focus on workers is a key part, isn't it, of what we're doing because, you know, making sure that the activity that we're offering is really relevant and useful for them, not just designed again in that top down way. So so we've got various ways of including people who can influence how we're setting up this activity from the start, haven't we?

00:09:55:01 - 00:10:25:14

Adam Whitworth

Absolutely, absolutely. So job crafting hasn't predominantly been developed or, delivered for workers and with workers with health conditions and disabilities. And so one of the really significant things that we're doing in the project, particularly in this, you know, we started in April of 2025, it’s, just over a three year project. So we're we're in a kind of design phase at the moment and trial delivery to begin and run next year.

00:10:25:14 - 00:10:58:11

Adam Whitworth

But in this design phase, we've been co-producing the intervention, the design of it, with partners with health conditions and disabilities. So that co-production element with lived experience has been really important to making job crafting and the way everything that we're doing around it, not just the intervention design itself, the activities, the workshops, but all of the materials to make sure that they're really tailored for, and accessible to workers with different health conditions and disabilities.

00:10:58:13 - 00:11:22:20

Adam Whitworth

And that's important not just for wishes, but actually, I think what it's showing us is that what that's doing is enriching the job crafting model and job crafting literature that's currently out there and been, I think that a really good example of how which co-production can really help grow our project substantively as well as methodologically and in terms of partner engagement.

00:11:22:20 - 00:11:24:06

Adam Whitworth

And buy-in.

00:11:24:08 - 00:11:39:10

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. No, I do think it's a really key difference in what we're doing, is making sure that that side of it is, you know, it's not just lip service to it, but actually really making sure there is co-production and co-design run throughout everything that we're doing, including even the surveys.

00:11:39:12 - 00:12:07:02

Adam Whitworth

Exactly. Even the surveys. So we're moving through the whole thing, the the job crafting intervention itself. What should the workshops look like? What should the activities look like? How do we make sure they are accessible? But all of the research, is also being co-produced with partners with lived experience of disabilities and health conditions. So all the interview schedules, even the really dry technical survey questions, partners with lived experience have got some of them.

00:12:07:02 - 00:12:24:10

Adam Whitworth

Not all of them. Some of them got a real appetite to get involved in helping us with survey instruments. And that's proven.. I think you're I think you're right to say, I think it is a distinctive part of the project now. It's very intensive because we are having to we're having meetings with partners and we're asking partners to invest a lot.

00:12:24:12 - 00:12:46:06

Adam Whitworth

You know, we're having meetings roughly every three weeks or so, waves of meetings, taking materials and co-producing, coming back with refining materials. So it certainly takes time and commitment and resource to really do it well. But I think we're really starting to see the benefits of that in terms of improvements to the project.

00:12:46:08 - 00:13:06:22

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah, absolutely. And we're really grateful for their time input to that. So it's yeah, it's definitely worth acknowledging here as well. And so you carefully, answered your own question about what is job crafting. But just for those of those who are listening, who want to know a little bit more about the detail, what are some real life examples of job crafting so people can get a hold on it?

00:13:06:24 - 00:13:35:13

Adam Whitworth

So job crafting has been used in a whole variety of different, job roles and sectors. You know, as a classic example amongst hospital cleaners in manufacturing, in retail. And I guess that's one of its advantages is that it's, bottom up and centred around the worker. And so it's really flexible and tailored to whatever environment and type of job or, job role that that individual is in.

00:13:35:15 - 00:14:09:01

Adam Whitworth

So the classic, example or one of them in the literature is around job crafting amongst hospital cleaners who, when compared to a group of cleaners in hospitals who weren’t crafting, created changes to the way that they worked, improvements to their efficiency, but also really significant improvements to their job satisfaction, through job crafting. We talk in our job crafting model around seeking resources, about reducing a lot to missing demands and about seeking challenges.

00:14:09:01 - 00:14:25:12

Adam Whitworth

And so there are different ways that you can craft in combination of those three things. And I think one thing that's striking is that many all of us have crafted before, we might not have thought of it like that or talked about it like that. So a couple of examples I think if I think about just about myself.

00:14:25:14 - 00:14:47:09

Adam Whitworth

I have had to craft work particularly I guess two main examples, particularly when I had my, son the way in which I need to work, had to change. And so I had the autonomy. And now I think we're fortunate as academics, we have a great deal of autonomy and fortunate to be supported by my employer here at Strathclyde.

00:14:47:09 - 00:15:09:17

Adam Whitworth

Who are, you know, are wonderful values based, you know, human centered employer. So I had to craft the way that I work very differently, different hours, different locations, you know, coincided post-Covid with a greater use of technology and hybrid. Certainly location and hours had to change. And that made a huge difference. So it's a good example.

00:15:09:17 - 00:15:48:17

Adam Whitworth

Crafting often isn't very significant in terms of what they ask is. But even, for example, me moving my workday an hour earlier or moving tasks, later on one day early on, another day enabled me to juggle, for example, childcare drop offs and collections with my partner in a way that worked for us. So it's the openness, I guess, of the employer or the ability to have the autonomy to do that, which makes a huge amount of difference, even though some of these things are relatively modest, and I think they're really important instrumentally in terms of enabling me and my household, my son, to balance work and family life.

00:15:48:17 - 00:16:23:01

Adam Whitworth

But they also, I think have certainly made me feel valued as an employee, appreciated by the organization, who are open to a conversation about making that work. So that's an example, a personal example. I guess we've also seen it through co-production in the WISHES project. So, lived experience group of people with all sorts of health conditions and disabilities and all sorts of types of employment and the examples coming through from people about ways in which they've been able to craft those roles to better enable them in different ways to sustain work.

00:16:23:01 - 00:16:47:00

Adam Whitworth

And I think, just as importantly, and in terms of the motivation and the need for WISHES, times for many of those people when that's not been supported or made possible by the employer, and that that really significant harms of that has caused those people as well as those people's jobs and careers. And you talk through those clearly last impacts for people.

00:16:47:01 - 00:17:09:04

Adam Whitworth

And when it's gone well, and often, like I say, what's being asked for is relatively modest. Yeah. And it's the openness of the employer to have that flexible conversation around workplace accommodations, which, I one of the things we're promoting in WISHES, I guess, is the focus is health conditions, disabilities. But actually, like my personal example, people have all sorts of crafting needs.

00:17:09:07 - 00:17:32:08

Adam Whitworth

You know, for me, the first time it appeared was in a significant way was to do with the, the birth of my son and work family reconciliation. So actually creating organizational cultures and environments where an openness to conversations around accommodations and crafting is good for all workers, not just workers with health conditions and disabilities.

00:17:32:10 - 00:18:00:06

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. And that's something that ties into the message that comes out of our work on the Evolve workplace wellbeing project. Of course, that one of the things that we constantly talk about is that sort of two way dialogue. So there are lots of different ways of finding out what people's needs are, making sure they're heard. And then that, you know, there's something is it's done in response, whether it's something that can be done really easily or something needs to be done in negotiation that it's part of and parcel of how employees are treated in that organization.

00:18:00:06 - 00:18:02:01

Helen Fitzhugh

It's not an exception, as it were.

00:18:02:04 - 00:18:03:07

Adam Whitworth

Absolutely, absolutely.

00:18:03:08 - 00:18:12:00

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. So what do you think will be the main challenges for people who want to learn from our project and put the findings into practice?

00:18:12:05 - 00:18:36:21

Adam Whitworth

I think it's a great question. So one is short term pressures. So I think inevitably organizations will continue to be in different ways, pressurized. And that has a tendency both in terms of growth, in terms of cost pressures, in terms of work intensification, in terms of priorities or different issues that emerge, the organizations have to deal with.

00:18:36:21 - 00:19:21:20

Adam Whitworth

And that can often have the tendency now to undercut new innovative practice like crafting. So I think that's one. I think there's another thing about variability at the, you know, line managers will have a key role, as well as EDI and HR teams. I think what WISHES and interventions like job crafting will need to help the HR profession do is to become more skilled and more comfortable, at enabling more tailored, more personalized accommodations at work in the knowledge that that doesn't pose a threat to, for example, the delivery of legal duties or, the inequitable treatment of staff. That actually to treat people

00:19:21:20 - 00:19:28:03

Adam Whitworth

the same when they have different needs is not a view of equality and isn't a legal necessity.

00:19:28:05 - 00:19:54:12

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah, I think all of that really reflects how complex this is. But also, if we go back to the basis of the WISHES project, we know that there is good evidence on job crafting being something that people find useful and effective. So we're building off the top of that. But we also take into account, you know, these more complex organizational elements and trying to kind of take those into consideration as well, aren't we?

00:19:54:12 - 00:20:20:17

Helen Fitzhugh

And I think the other thing to say is we're offering free workshops to people aren’t we, so, you know, in that sense, it's a really large opportunity for people to get involved at this point in the innovation of this kind of employer friendly, piece of work that we're doing. So I think I just wanted to mention that to people who might be listening, if you are, you know, a large employer who's interested in this here's an opportunity to be at the vanguard of that.

00:20:20:17 - 00:20:21:03

Helen Fitzhugh

Really

00:20:21:05 - 00:20:46:04

Adam Whitworth

We are. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. So we're offering, we're funded, fortunate to have a large 1.8 million pound trial, NIHR funded, a brilliant expert research team and a facilitator. So, yeah, like you say, you know, we're in a great position. We can offer the job crafting workshops, and trial for no cost to employers.

00:20:46:04 - 00:21:03:24

Adam Whitworth

We're looking to identify partner employees at the moment. So certainly if there's employers out there who are keen to have a chat, be really happy to talk. And then the question of inside the project, what we'll build at the end is a set of free resources to help employers do that in the future. But yeah. Thank you.

00:21:04:02 - 00:21:06:17

Adam Whitworth

Absolutely, if employers want to get in touch, please just drop me a line.

00:21:06:19 - 00:21:22:13

Helen Fitzhugh

Right. So that's all been really, really interesting and I but I can't let you get away without asking my difficult question, which is I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, looking to the future, what do you think that the pressing workplace wellbeing issues of the next decade?

00:21:22:15 - 00:21:23:19

Adam Whitworth

A big question, Helen.

00:21:23:22 - 00:21:27:13

Helen Fitzhugh

It is a big question. I like to ask it though.[laughs]

00:21:27:15 - 00:21:54:09

Adam Whitworth

I mean, I think there are some things which we know are going to be continue to be important. So I think, one is labour market intensification. So I think that will continue. I think the intensification of work for many / most people, for different reasons, will continue. I think there's a something around employer cost pressures, which also will continue, I think.

00:21:54:11 - 00:22:26:06

Adam Whitworth

And then thirdly, technological change, I'm sure that I, I'm already I think, close to technological dinosaur stage. But the very rapid advent and growth of AI in the next decade, I think will in ten years time have transformed the nature of work and had very significant effects on the viability or the nature of very many jobs. I think we will all be working in different ways, so I think those three things will continue.

00:22:26:08 - 00:22:59:14

Adam Whitworth

Clearly there's opportunities inside technological change as well, but great challenges as well. And then I think there's some people may have got a sense I'm really interested in the policy landscape around this as well. How do we as a nation build a policy environment and a set of policies that better support employers and better support workers? So if you think about if we step back and think about the UK system at the moment, we've got a strikingly disconnected employment system and health system, and that's ongoing.

00:22:59:14 - 00:23:21:23

Adam Whitworth

I think very important conversations about how they shift from being from the employment side, a supply side focus on people who are not in work or in work and struggling, how they become more demand side to to not just to engage employers in that, which is what often the debate is around, but actually, how do we use employment policy to support employers around workforce health issues?

00:23:22:02 - 00:23:45:09

Adam Whitworth

How do we better connect the work and health systems for businesses, for workers, as well as for those out of work? Clearly, a lot of conversation currently around devolution and the role of localism inside that, as well as about trying to shift, you know, one of Wes Streeting’s priorities in terms of NHS transformation is about upstream shifting to prevention, which I think is also very sensible, very difficult to do in practice.

00:23:45:13 - 00:24:01:24

Adam Whitworth

I think they're all the right things to be seeking to do and they will be important. I think if we are to really make a step change in the support offer that we're able to deliver to businesses and to workers in terms of work and health as well, of course, as to those who are economically inactive or out of work.

00:24:02:01 - 00:24:14:20

Helen Fitzhugh

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, again, it's traditional to ask if the listener only takes one simple message from what you've said today. Although, of course, we hope that they will take more. What would you want it to be?

00:24:14:22 - 00:24:50:05

Adam Whitworth

Another very challenging question, Helen. I think in a way it would be to be to be relational in our practice with our staff, our workers, our colleagues, to be human centred. If we think about what's underneath job crafting, at its heart, it is structured clearly, but at its heart, I think, the message around being open to a conversation of recognizing all of our differences and all of our strengths, we all of us, have different sorts of needs.

00:24:50:05 - 00:25:35:10

Adam Whitworth

And being open to a conversation around how we better include people, how we grow accessibility, how we make accommodations in different ways for different people so that we don't treat them differently or more or less fairly. But how we enable each of us to be our best selves at work and deliver what we maximally can deliver. And I think a lot of that comes down at core to the very simple human ways, of relationships and interactions and respect between different people that, sometimes get lost when we layer on lots of processes and policies and interventions and, standardization, but different understandable reasons.

00:25:35:10 - 00:25:54:07

Adam Whitworth

But sometimes we lose sight. I think of most people actually, you know the vast majority of people are trying to do the best that they can do. Yeah, and have a lot of other things. I think I've learned that more as I've gone through my life. People have other things going on in their life, and we all of us need like to work in different ways or need different kinds of support.

00:25:54:07 - 00:26:02:17

Adam Whitworth

So I guess that would be my one simple message is to sometimes just go back to the human, and be open. Be open to that conversation.

00:26:02:20 - 00:26:32:07

Helen Fitzhugh

That's great. Thank you. That’s a lovely place to finish. So yeah, thank you so much for talking with me today. We're really looking forward taking the WISHES project forward together. I'm going to make sure that the link to the website is on the podcast blurb so that people can find out more. There's also the opportunity to have conversations with yourself and some of my colleagues and, and myself as well about, if organizations are interested in taking part in the trial as well.

00:26:32:07 - 00:26:40:11

Helen Fitzhugh

So, you know, we'll put that information on the blurb for the podcast. And please feel free to get in touch with us. So thank you, Adam.

00:26:40:13 - 00:26:44:23

Adam Whitworth

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Helen.

00:26:45:00 - 00:26:55:22

Helen Fitzhugh

Please do visit www.EvolveWorkplaceWellbeing.org. We look forward to seeing you next time.