Our library

The demand for pet-friendly practices has increased since the global pandemic, with some employees reporting a preference for working alongside their companion dogs. Despite increased scholarly interest in pet-friendly practices, gaps exist in understanding their real-world impact. This study examines...

Organisations are recognising that more needs to be done to support female talent. One response to this is women-only leadership development programmes (WLDPs). To date, no scoping review has previously been conducted to examine the design and outcomes of these programmes. The purpose of the present...

Background: The level of stress experienced by staff in the healthcare sector is highly prevalent and well documented. Self-compassion may support the health and wellbeing of individuals and enable them to stay well at work. This study aimed to understand whether a brief, online, self-guided, novel intervention...

The work of people professionals has unique and difficult challenges such as managing conflict, undertaking redundancy and restructuring. People professionals are often the 'face' of such activities or programmes, even if they are not the decision makers. HR work may also involve advising on or supporting...

The "Management Competencies to Prevent and Reduce Stress at Work" (MCPARS) approach focuses on identifying the stress-preventive managers' competencies able to optimise the employees' well-being through the management of the psychosocial work environment. Considering leadership as contextualised in...

Long COVID is a complex syndrome that affects many people previously infected with COVID-19. It has major implications for the workforce, contributing to sickness absence, impaired productivity and job loss. Karina Nielsen and Jo Yarker explain how a framework that combines support from managers, occupational...

Mental health presents a major challenge in the modern workplace, and COVID-19 exacerbated this challenge. In this chapter, we propose the Integrated Organizational Mental Health Resilience Framework, a framework that outlines the steps needed for organizations to develop resilience against turbulence....

This chapter discusses research on factors impacting wellbeing for three groups of employees with very different working patterns: business travellers, remote rotational workers, and hybrid workers. The chapter presents three studies, conducted with global samples between 2018 and 2021, which explored...

Click here to watch our webinar in collaboration with the Society of Occupational Medicine about long COVID workers' lived experiences adjusting to work.

If you want to find out more about working with long COVID, have a look at our guides with CIPD:

• Working with long COVID - guide for employees
• Working...

There is growing interest in the role of psychological flexibility as a potential resilience factor in workplace settings for protecting employees against the risk of job burnout. This field study contributes to the literature by investigating the utility of delivering brief ACT-informed training to...

Moral injury has primarily been studied from a clinical perspective to assess, diagnose and treat the outcomes of morally injurious experiences in healthcare and military settings. Little is known about the lived experiences of those who have had their moral values transgressed in business settings....

Taking an integrated approach to mental health and wellbeing brings gains to health, performance and retention. We provide a summary of the latest research and share cost calculations you can use to estimate the overall cost of poor mental health in your organisation. Our review shows that investing...

Long-term sickness costs businesses in the United Kingdom (UK) approximately £7 billion per annum. Most long-term sickness absences are attributed to common mental health conditions, which are also highly prevalent in people with acute or musculoskeletal health conditions. This study will pilot...

Each guide focussed on the common uses of technology, as well as the benefits and risks across six key Human Resource areas:

• Recruitment and workforce planning
• Performance management
• Employee wellbeing
• Employee voice
• Learning and development
• Equality, diversity and inclusion

Through literature review, interviews...

In July 2022, a statutory requirement for all NHS and social care systems to be organised into integrated care systems came into effect. Integrated care systems are partnerships that bring together healthcare, local government and other agencies to collectively manage service planning, improve health...

"Moral injury is not only detrimental to the mental health of individuals but also has significant implications for organisations"

The majority of research into moral injury has been focused on high-risk sectors such as the military, emergency services and healthcare sectors, so we recently conducted...

The severity and longevity of long COVID that has also affected the working population, raises the important question, how organisations can support workers with long COVID to stay and thrive in the workplace. In the present study, we used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the lived...

The 'cost-of-living crisis', defined as the fall in 'real' disposable income that the UK has been experiencing since late 2021 is having a profound impact on the nation. Inflation reached a 40 year high in October 2022 (ONS, 2022a) and the fiscal year 2022-23 saw the biggest one-year fall in living standards...

Line managers hold a primary role in preventing poor mental health within the workplace and, therefore, need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to effectively carry out this role. The Managing Minds at Work (MMW) intervention aims to increase line managers' knowledge and confidence in preventing...

Given the colossal interest in creating 'coaching cultures', we update the 2014 literature review by Gormley and van Nieuwerburgh and extend this work by applying a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology. In doing so, we detangle definitions and the conditions under which 'coaching cultures'...

Speaking out on mental health and 'leading by example' is often easier said than done. For those who consider share their experience, the worries round vulnerability, stigma and being judged have historically often been justified. This report examines the research evidence on the outcomes of senior leader...

The research on return to work for workers with common mental disorders has primarily focused on the pre-return journey. Relapses and recurrent sick leaves are prevalent and call for research on how we can support workers stay and thrive at work after long-term sickness absence due to common mental disorders....

During national lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, previously office-based workers who transitioned to home-based teleworking faced additional demands (e.g., childcare, inadequate homeworking spaces) likely resulting in poor work privacy fit. Previous office research suggests poor work privacy...

The rapid increase in the number of wellbeing frameworks available has given rise to a bewildering choice for organisations. The Working Well Maturity Framework was developed in response to calls from Affinity's Research Consortium, to develop a clear picture on how frameworks differ and to develop a...

Purpose: There has been a rapid increase in the number of mental health interventions implemented in the
workplace. The efficacy of these interventions has been mixed. The factors influencing implementation may offer
insights to why some interventions fail to be effective.
Method: We conducted a meta-synthesis...

The Digital Mindsets project aims to develop our understanding of people's attitudes and beliefs regarding technology and change in the workplace (their digital mindset) and use this understanding to help support people through change, thus ensuring a more inclusive workplace.

Affinity Health at Work...

Supervisors play an important role in supporting employees to return to work following sickness absence due to common mental disorders; stress, anxiety and depression, however, employees may not always feel supported. We examined employees' perceptions of their supervisors' attitudes and behaviours pre,...

Remote working has become increasingly common in the modern workforce, hugely accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that support for wellbeing in organisations has had to adapt to a new context. The aim of this research, carried out by Affinity Health at Work on behalf of the International SOS...

This review examined the extent, nature and quality of the current empirical evidence for physical workplace adjustment to support occupational longevity, performance and health/well-being in ND workers because of their specific sensory needs. Our results indicate that the research is generally not well-developed,...