IGLOO: An integrated framework for sustainable return to work in workers with common mental disorders

ORIENTATION: For a long time, employees have been viewed as passive performers of their assigned job tasks. Recently, several scholars have argued that job design theory needs to address the influence of employees on their job designs. RESEARCH PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to fit job crafting in job design theory. MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY: The study was an attempt to shed more light on the types of proactive behaviours of individual employees at work. Moreover, we explored the concept of job crafting and its antecedents and consequences. RESEARCH DESIGN, APPROACH AND METHOD: A literature study was conducted in which the focus was first on proactive behaviour of the employee and then on job crafting. MAIN FINDINGS: Job crafting can be seen as a specific form of proactive behaviour in which the employee initiates changes in the level of job demands and job resources. Job crafting may be facilitated by job and individual characteristics and may enable employees to fit their jobs to their personal knowledge, skills and abilities on the one hand and to their preferences and needs on the other hand. PRACTICAL/MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: Job crafting may be a good way for employees to improve their work motivation and other positive work outcomes. Employees could be encouraged to exert more influence on their job characteristics. CONTRIBUTION/VALUE-ADD: This article describes a relatively new perspective on active job redesign by the individual, called job crafting, which has important implications for job design theories.

It has been suggested that certain types of work may increase the risk of common mental disorders, but the exact nature of the relationship has been contentious. The aim of this paper is to conduct the first comprehensive systematic meta-review of the evidence linking work to the development of common mental health problems, specifically depression, anxiety and/or work-related stress and to consider how the risk factors identified may relate to each other. MEDLINE, PsychInfo, Embase, the Cochrane Collaboration and grey literature databases were systematically searched for review articles that examined work-based risk factors for common mental health problems. All included reviews were subjected to a quality appraisal. 37 review studies were identified, of which 7 were at least moderate quality. 3 broad categories of work-related factors were identified to explain how work may contribute to the development of depression and/or anxiety: imbalanced job design, occupational uncertainty and lack of value and respect in the workplace. Within these broad categories, there was moderate level evidence from multiple prospective studies that high job demands, low job control, high effort-reward imbalance, low relational justice, low procedural justice, role stress, bullying and low social support in the workplace are associated with a greater risk of developing common mental health problems. While methodological limitations continue to preclude more definitive statements on causation between work and mental disorders, there is now a range of promising targets for individual and organisational-level interventions aimed at minimising mental health problems in the workplace.