Designing SMARTer work to reduce psychosocial risks: Evaluating the effectiveness of a participatory workredesign intervention in aged care.

Abstract

Recent reports highlight complex systematic problems in the aged care sector, including high risks for psychosocial injuries related to work design. Among the most cited risks are high emotional demands and excess workload driven by complex legislative, industry, and organisational factors. There is a lack of documented intervention research that targets complex configurations of job demands experienced by direct care workers who make the majority of paid workers in aged care. The current project titled Designing SMARTer work to reduce psychosocial risks: Evaluating the effectiveness of a participatory work-redesign intervention in aged care was funded by Safe Work Australia through the grant initiative “Interventions to manage work-related psychosocial hazards”. The grant was awarded to a team of researchers at the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University and conducted across 2022 and 2023. We partnered with a large Australian nonfor-profit aged care provider to conduct a primary, organisational-level work redesign intervention aimed to modify the work environment to minimise and eliminate psychosocial risks associated with increased demands in the sector. The resulting intervention comprised integrated solutions across factors that affect work design, including system (e.g., rosters, workforce management) and local influences (e.g., task distribution methods) developed via a participatory approach.