Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing

Investigators:

• Professor Ashlea Troth
• Professor Ruth McPhail
• Ms Nola Turner-Jensen
• Assoc Professor Kerry Bodle
• Ms Kelsey Chapman

Working with Department of Transport and Main Roads (QLD) as part of the Transport Academic Partnership (2020-2025) this project aims to identify and examine the characteristics of culturally safe and inclusive Indigenous workplaces as a part of a continuing contribution to the 'Closing the Gap' agenda. The current disproportionately low Indigenous workforce is associated with significant social and economic problems and compromises the provision of services to Indigenous Australian customers/clients across multiple areas (e.g., health, education, transport).

The findings from this project will be used to identify priority actions that will improve the cultural inclusiveness and accessibility of TMR's workplaces and work practices.

Investigators:

• Professor Adrian Wilkinson
• Professor Paula Brough
• Dr. Carys Chan
• Dr. Sudong Shang

Chronic occupational stress is identified as a significant problem that costs the Australian economy $15 billion annually. This project has been co-developed with our partner UnitingCare, one of Australia's largest non-government community health services providers, who have identified investment in workplace wellness as one of their strategic priorities. The research project aims to evaluate and enhance UnitingCare's workplace wellness strategy, with the ultimate goal of improving the wellbeing of healthcare workers in Australia.

The research findings are expected to be generalisable to other healthcare organizations and industries with occupational wellbeing programs.

Investigators:

• Adrian Wilkinson
• Michael Barry
• Paula Mowbray

This project aims to explore the determinants of speaking up in healthcare and the consequences this voice has for quality of patient care and worker wellbeing. We do so by taking a systemic approach to worker voice—one that captures the range of different practices and arrangements and differentiates between voice focused on patient care and voice focused on worker concerns.

We will examine how voice bundles operate within a complex healthcare provider, where we expect variations in bundles across the organisation and where we anticipate this variation will have an impact on patient and worker outcomes.

Investigators:

• A/Prof Rebecca Loudoun
• Dr. Amanda Biggs
• Dr. Adam Robertson
• Prof Keith Townsend

The prevailing lack of comprehensive research and consensus surrounding the severity of mental health challenges and suicide risk within the Fly-in Fly-out (FIFO) and Drive-in Drive-out (DIDO) workforce poses a significant concern. This issue is particularly disconcerting given the rising body of scholarly work suggesting that FIFO/DIDO workers face substantially elevated levels of psychological distress, depression, and feelings of despair as compared to the broader population.

To address these shortcomings, this project worked with industry partner Mates in Construction (Aust) Limited to provide data-driven insights for the development of more effective interventions to support the mental health and wellbeing of our FIFO/DIDO workforce.