Researchers Define 32 Elements of 'Healthy' Work in £1.5m UK Study

A £1.5 million UK research project has identified 32 specific features that determine whether a job protects or damages workers' health, spanning work-life balance, job design, pay, security and employees' voice in the workplace.

The 'Creating Healthy Jobs' project, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), flips the conventional question. Instead of asking how to retain employees once they fall ill, researchers want to know how employers can design jobs that keep people healthy in the first place.

The University of Warwick leads the work, with research teams from the University of East Anglia, Cardiff University and the University of Birmingham. Together they are building an online resource showing how better job design could improve the nation's health, reduce inequalities and help more people stay in work.

What the 32 elements look like in practice

The recommendations group into seven areas, and many are concrete enough for employers to act on immediately:

• Implementing flexible working arrangements
• Planning shifts in advance
• Limiting excessive working hours
• Reducing unnecessary out-of-hours emails
• Creating opportunities for staff to interact with each other
• Enabling people to see how their work improves customers' lives
• Rethinking how work is delivered

The full list of 32 elements is publicly available through the project's online tool, which employers and policymakers can use to benchmark roles against the framework.

For individuals, the framework offers something practical: a checklist for evaluating a job offer or a current role. A position that combines predictable shift scheduling, capped hours and genuine flexibility scores better on the health dimension than one paying marginally more with unpredictable rosters and constant after-hours contact. In a labour market where job-related ill health carries measurable costs — in lost income, career interruption and long-term employability — those design features carry real market value.

A 'national crisis'

Professor Chris Warhurst, director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick and the project's principal investigator, framed the stakes bluntly.

"The high rate and cost of job-related ill health have been described as a national crisis," he said. "What matters is finding the tipping point between jobs that are bad or good for health. Let's not only debate how we keep people working, but how work can keep people healthy too."

He added: "By understanding what makes work healthy, we can help employers and policymakers create jobs that support both wellbeing and long-term economic prosperity."

What comes next

The project's next phase will examine how healthy jobs vary across sectors, regions and demographic groups. That work aims to give employers and policymakers a clearer picture of where unhealthy job design concentrates, and for whom.

The end goal is a practical 'roadmap' for creating healthier, more sustainable jobs — a tool that could reshape how UK organisations approach hiring, retention and workforce planning.