Professor M.C Schraefel
Our project seeks to explore what we consider a grand challenge: how to co-design work tobe healthful out of the box, rather than being something from which we must recover andattempt to rebuild health, on our own dime and time, at the end of each day?
We see this question as fundamentally complex and necessarily interdisciplinary. To begin to adequately engage the complexities of “work”, we need (1) multiple ways of knowing, suchas perspectives from psychology, sociology, economics, human factors, human performance, computing, design, archaeology and (2) ways to learn from each other to interrogate andintegrate our own epistemologies to be able to engage this vast topic, meaningfully. Our practice in terms of PLACE is right here, right now, in the University - one of the largest and most diverse workforce communities in Southampton.
Our process: co-interrogation, development and sharing of experience, knowledge and practice.
This policy project is a Primer Phase to our larger question: its goal is to start to build conversations within the university's work families to better understand our currentexperiences of what makes our work sing and what makes it sour.We appreciate that groups like HR have been looking at for example work load as trying toget the balance right in terms of expectations within a particular role. Our approach is to take a more systems thinking approach to work, to better consider contexts that influence whatbrings us here, now, to our particular roles.
In terms of exploring work design, we propose a “co-scientist” approach – where ourstakeholders – including ourselves – join us to explore how best to understand workpractices, effects and how to experiment with new practices and technologies.
In the project activities proposed below, we propose to facilitate a series of conversations via podcast, town halls, various fora to build and share voices with each other and to reflectback what we hear, to ensure we are listening and reflecting what's being said.
We propose to use this project not only for its primary outcomes towards informing policy around work, but also as a pilot to test this invitational methodology forco-exploring practice-to-policy ideas.
In terms of policy evolution, we are asking:
Does being aware of policy questions andevolving responses help with better engagement towards policy - more than only post analysispresentation?
Does this approach help us create a policy roadmap for better healthful work for all?
Is it a policy dialogue that can be effectively sustained towards continually building healthful work specifically and dynamic functional policies more generally?