Centre for Organisational Health & Well-being (COHWB)

Conducting high quality leading edge research of relevance and utility to Employers, HR specialists, Health and Safety Managers and Allied Health Professionals as well as the academic community.

Professor Stavroula Leka — Stavroula Leka

Welcome to COHWB

The Centre for Organisational Health & Well-being is based at Lancaster University in the UK. It is a multi- and inter-disciplinary centre aiming to support employers, policy makers and other key stakeholders to develop sustainable, healthy work and healthy workplaces. The Centre brings together expertise from the Faculty of Health & Medicine, Lancaster University Management School, and the Work Foundation to address challenges associated with the changing nature of work and achieve its aim.

Professor Stavroula Leka,

Director of COHWB

About the Centre

Technological developments, climate change, global pandemics, demographic shifts and globalisation are transforming the world and the world of work. These forces are impacting who works and when, how work is organised and managed, and how work environments are defined. People and the work they do should be placed at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice to achieve a sustainable and healthy future of work. Sustainable work means achieving living and working conditions that support people in engaging and remaining in work throughout an extended working life for as long as they wish. For this to be achieved, it is important that the factors that hinder employment are tackled. Job quality and healthy work and work environment design are the cornerstone of sustainable work.

Engagement with policy makers, business leaders, HR and (allied) health professionals, health and safety professionals and the academic community is at the heart of our research, education, consultancy and policy work. Key themes in our work include:

Healthy work and workplace design
Mental health and well-being in the future of work
Leadership in sustainable work and organisations
Organisational health and resilience, innovation and competitiveness
Regulation and employment systems in the future of work
Human rights, responsibility, trust and employee voice in new work landscapes
Agile policy making, governance and sustainable work and development
Lifelong learning and sustainable working lives
Equality, diversity and inclusion in employment and new forms of work
Workplace intervention development and evaluation

COHWB Members

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Research Themes

We focus on three main research themes; Sustainable working lives, Interventions and Policy analysis. Select the relevant tab below to read more detailed information about each.

This theme focuses on:

Work transitions throughout the lifecycle of work and the promotion of agile working with a view to addressing economic inactivity, early retirement and changing meaning/expectations of work.
Ways of working, and organisational culture and their impact on health, wellbeing and organisational outcomes.
The role of leadership in shaping organisational health and wellbeing.
Determinants of the value and meaning of work.
Voices, inclusivity and psychological safety and how these can transform organisations.

This theme focuses on: the design, implementation and evaluation on key interventions to promote organisational health and well-being in various contexts. It includes the development of toolkits and guidelines for organisations in key areas, e.g. healthy work and healthy workplaces; menopause and working life; sustainability, health and wellbeing; and workplace health promotion.

This theme focuses on:

Regulation and policy on work and health and its relationship with organisational and societal outcomes.
Policy analysis through documentary analysis, secondary analysis of large-scale data, and qualitative research with key stakeholders to support policy evaluation and the development of guidelines.
Critical analysis of indicators used to measure key dimensions of work, for example, remuneration in the context of higher workload and longer working hours; workload/productivity/work output measures in the context of the changing nature of work and multiple within-job roles.

Project Highlight

Effective delivery of occupational safety and health services: Promoting occupational safety and health as a universal fundamental right at work

High occupational safety and health (OSH) standards are crucial for the future of work and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recent trends, including demographic shifts, technological advancements, climate change, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have evidenced the need to increase efforts to protect and promote health, safety and well-being.

Despite OSH being a fundamental human right, it is estimated that 80% of the global workforce do not have access to basic OSH services (i.e., services entrusted with essentially preventive functions and responsible for advising the employer, the workers and their representatives in the undertaking on the requirements for establishing and maintaining a safe and healthy working environment). Additionally, there are significant disparities regarding scope, content and quality between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and across various occupational sectors and work models.

This research is funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and aims to explore how OSH services are delivered worldwide. It focuses on understanding the factors influencing the implementation of OSH services globally, such as national policies, economic status, organizational size, and work models to ensure a diverse and inclusive approach that covers formal and informal sector workers alike. The research team includes Professor Stavroula Leka as the primary investigator, Dr Sabir Giga, Dr Claire Hardy, and Dr Kay Greasley as co-investigators, and Miguel Munoz-Harrison and Maha Siddiqui as researchers. The project is conducted in collaboration with the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) for data collection and dissemination of project outputs. The objectives include updating the global state of the art on OSH service delivery, advance knowledge of OSH service delivery in HICs and LMICs, update existing conceptual models on OSH services and provide consensus on priorities for the future of effective OSH service delivery. Project activities include a literature review on the global state of the art on OSH services, an ICOH/IOSH survey on OSH services, the development of national case studies, stakeholder interviews, and a global roundtable on OSH services to provide recommendations on the future of OSH service implementation. By mobilising the global OSH community, we strive to translate our findings into impactful policies and practices, ultimately promoting a safer and healthier working environment for all.

2023 – 2025 Leka, S., Giga, S.I., Hardy, C., and Greasley, K. ‘Effective delivery of occupational safety and health services: Promoting occupational safety and health as a universal fundamental right at work’. Funded by The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) (£149,224).

Someone with a hi-visibility vest and a clipboard. — 80% of the global workforce do not have access to basic OSH services

Stemming the Tide: Healthier Jobs to Tackle Economic Inactivity

This study, conducted by The Work Foundation, in collaboration with Professor Stavroula Leka and the Centre for Organisational Health and Well-being at Lancaster University, aims to provide new evidence, insights and policy direction for how Government and employers can work together to help retain more people who experience health issues in employment. It features a longitudinal analysis of the employment journeys of 9,169 workers aged 16-60 from 2017/18 to 2021/22 using the Understanding Society dataset to shed light on who is leaving the labour market due to ill health and factors that influence the risk of falling into economic inactivity. It also draws on a survey of over 1,000 senior business leaders across Great Britain and roundtable discussions with employers and policymakers on the challenges and opportunities to support healthier working lives.

The new Government has set an ambitious target to raise the employment rate to 80% – which would represent an increase of approximately 2.4 million more people in work than today. Achieving this target is critical to the Government’s wider goals of growing the economy, balancing the public finances and improving living standards across the country. However, in reality, the UK faces a number of health-related workforce challenges that will make realising this ambition particularly difficult. Since the beginning of 2020, the number of people who have left the labour market altogether due to long-term illness has risen by 671,000, and now sits at a near record 2.78 million. In 2024, the UK remains the only G7 country with a smaller workforce than before the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the pandemic may have accelerated the rate at which people have left the labour market during this period, evidence suggests that the decline in health among the working age population is a longer-term trend that will continue In response, the Government has launched a new ‘Get Britain Working’ White Paper, with a primary focus on boosting support and work incentives for those who have fallen into economic inactivity – including interventions for those with long-term illnesses and a review to understand how employers can support workers to stay in employment. But until the Keep Britain Working Review reports in Autumn 2025, there remains a significant policy gap as to how to stem the flow of those leaving the labour market due to ill health in the first place.

This study provides the following recommendations to the Government:

Ensure the Employment Rights Bill enshrines secure and flexible working from day one of employment
Revise the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 to reflect current modern workforce challenges, including psychosocial risks and mental health issues, and enhance enforcement of mental health risk assessments and preventive measures
Lead a strategic transformation of occupational health services focused on improved and extended coverage for all workers, with mandatory provision by large employers
Establish a UK-wide network of one-stop workforce health hubs, offering funded small and medium enterprises services and integrated with public health initiatives
Strengthen and increase Statutory Sick Pay to promote retention and enable a phased return to work
Examine the practicalities of extending the duty of care for employers, subsidising the cost of long-term sickness absence, and incentivising vocational rehabilitation

Read the report

graphic used on the report cover — Healthier jobs are needed to tackle economic inactivity in the UK

Conceptualising work-related psychosocial risks: current state of the art and implications for research, policy and practice

A new research report, co-authored by Professor Stavroula Leka, has been launched by the European Trade Union Institute. Work-related psychosocial hazards are recognised as one of the key concerns to be addressed in modern working life across the world and in the future of work. They refer to unfavourable working conditions in terms of the way work is organised and managed (e.g. high workloads, long working hours, lack of autonomy and support at work, harassment and bullying). There is now ample evidence that exposure to psychosocial hazards can put the health of workers and the sustainability of organisations at risk. The report presents the findings of a review and systematisation of the existing knowledge and evidence in this area, including key theories and models, conceptual definitions and terminology, validated measurement instruments, an overview of the relevant policy context at EU level and in selected Member States, and preventive measures, and provides recommendations for the priorities which remain to be addressed in research, policy and practice. The report can be accessed on the ETUI website: Conceptualising work-related psychosocial risks | etui

Work-related psychosocial hazards are recognised as one of the key concerns to be addressed in modern working life across the world and in the future of work. They refer to unfavourable working conditions in terms of the way work is organised and managed (e.g. high workloads, long working hours, lack of autonomy and support at work, harassment and bullying at work). There is now ample evidence that exposure to psychosocial hazards can put the health of workers and the sustainability of organisations at risk. Indeed, several studies have evidenced the relationship between the risks arising from psychosocial hazards, work-related psychosocial risks (PSR), and negative outcomes such as work-related stress, cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety, and mortality. Furthermore, PSR have been found to be related to sickness absenteeism and presenteeism as well as an early exit from the workforce due to disability. This report presents the findings of an ETUI project focusing on a review and systematisation of the existing evidence with the aim of providing clarity to the multidimensional concept of work-related PSR. It first provides a review of the literature that summarises the key theories and models of relevance to work-related PSR, the conceptual definitions and terminology, and the instruments which have been validated for risk assessment before delivering an overview of the relevant policy context at the EU level and in selected Member States.Second, it presents the findings of a scoping review of the literature and of a validation exercise with expert networks, which have informed the development of a conceptual framework and taxonomy of work-related PSR with different components:

Sources; such as aspects related to the macro context;
Factors; including job security, work-life balance;
Hazards; for example, job insecurity, work-life conflict;
Impacts and outcomes in terms of individual health and wellbeing, and organisational outcomes.

Third, a selection of preventive measures related to the work-related PSR taxonomy is also described with a focus on the organisational level, and the evidence on the importance of these measures is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the current state of the art on work-related PSR, and recommendations are provided for the priorities to be addressed in research, policy and practice.

Article cover — The report provides a state of the art review on work-related psychosocial risks

Study with us

PhD in Organisational Health and Well-Being

We currently have over 40 students registered on our Blended Learning (Part time/Taught) Doctoral programme in Organisational Health and Well-Being. Enquiries are welcome for those wishing to study for a PhD by the traditional thesis based route. For further information about study or working with the Centre, please contact Professor Stavroula Leka

Organisational Health and Well-Being PhD

Traditional PhD (by research and thesis) in Health Research

We offer supervision of research students in many areas of health-related social science. We welcome applications from students wishing to pursue research in the areas of organisational health and well-being highlighted as the focus of our research interests. We are particularly interested in supporting applications for those applying for externally funded fellowships.

Health Research Traditional Route PhD

COHWB Publications

Publications by staff and associates of COHWB are listed below. By selecting View our publications, you will have the opportunity to filter publications by year, type and/or keyword