93519 - Psychology of Wellbeing in Organizations

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will know the theoretical and applied models in the area of work and organizational psychology related to the assessment, protection and promotion of workers health and well-being using different intervention approaches targeting both work organization and individual workers.

Course contents

The course presents theories, methods, and assessment and intervention tools to promote health and wellbeing in the organizations and in different workplaces. The course involves the following integrated and complementary modules:

Stefano Toderi (6 credits; 45 hours)
The module is designed to provide….

1. Introduction to the module
2. Introduction to organizational wellbeing and key concepts of Work and Organizational Psychology
3. Job analysis: methods, instruments and products. Application to a real context
4. Work stress and its prevention: theoretical models, measurement and the European Perspective on prevention.
5. Work stress prevention phases
6. Organizational work stress interventions
7. The supervisor’s role in creating healthy workplaces
8. Work stress prevention in a real workplace context

Luca Pietrantoni (2 credits; 15 hours)
The module will provide an advanced theoretical and empirical approach to understand the role of technologies and digital solutions in health and safety in varying workplaces and industries. Topics will include:

• Digital technologies and health promotion in the workplace; acceptance and use of technology in the workplace; methods to analyse usability and acceptability of digital solutions.
• Design of technology (e.g., wearable devices, mobile apps, artificial intelligence tools, autonomous devices) in varying industries to meet the diverse needs and preferences of workers; potential and realized impacts of emerging technologies for health promotion.
• Nudging interventions, digital nudging and behaviour changes in organizations.
• Team-based training in health and safety (scenario-based, simulation-based training).
• Evaluation of organizational interventions; Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations; realist evaluation.

Each module is composed by theoretical parts, tools presentations, and group activities within research and intervention projects on the covered topics.

Readings/Bibliography

Scientific papers and other course materials for this course will be made available at the course website.

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures to interactively discuss the topics covered by the course, individual class presentations, group class presentations, work in small groups to write a project concerning interventions to prevent work-related stress in the organizations.

Assessment methods

Module 1

The final assessment of the Module 1 is based on:

- An “individual reflection paper” on the contents of the module. This will give 0-5 points

- A small-group work on job analysis. This will give 0-10 points

- A small-group project on work stress prevention. This will give 0-15 points

 

 

Module 2

The final assessment of the Module 2 is based on:

- A small-group work on Digital technology and health promotion. This will give 0-15 points

- An individual paper on team-based training. This will give 0-15 points

Scoring from 0 to 15 (0-5 for “individual reflection paper”; 0-10 for job analysis) points is graduated as follow:

• 0-3 points (0-1; 0-2): markedly inadequate, evident misunderstanding, lack of critical comprehension, or content off-topic
• 4-7 points (2; 3-4): presentation and/or discussion are not fully adequate; imprecisions, surface exam and description of the contents, lack of critical comprehension
• 8-11 point (3; 5-6): presentation and discussion are sufficiently clear and understandable; there are elements that denote critical deepening of the contents, albeit not fully evident
• 12-14 points (4; 7-8): presentation and discussion are very clear, lexicon is specific to the topic, evidence is clearly understood and described, and critical comprehension is evident; some of these aspects, however, is present but not fully achieved
• 15 points (5; 9-10): presentation and discussion fully meet the requirements as it concerns clarity, lexicon specificity, understanding and explanation of evidence.

Office hours

See the website of Stefano Toderi

See the website of Luca Pietrantoni