Rewarding work : cross-national differences in benefits, volunteering during unemployment, well-being and mental health

Due to increasing labour market flexibilisation a growing number of people are likely to experience unemployment and, as a consequence, lower mental health and well-being. This article examines cross-national differences in well-being and mental health between unemployed people who engage in voluntary work and those who do not, using multilevel data from the European Quality of Life Survey on unemployed individuals in 29 European countries and other external sources. This article finds that, regardless of their voluntary activity, unemployed people have higher levels of well-being and mental health in countries with more generous unemployment benefits. Unexpectedly, the results also suggest that regular volunteering can actually be detrimental for mental health in countries with less generous unemployment benefits. This article concludes that individual agency exercised through voluntary work can partially improve well-being but the generosity of unemployment benefits is vital for alleviating the negative mental health effects of unemployment

Forms of participation – the development and application of a conceptual model of participation in work environment interventions

In the realm of work environment improvements, the Nordic countries have led the way in demonstrating that employee participation is a key requisite for achieving improvements. Despite this there is a lack of precision on what ‘participatory’ in a participatory work environment intervention means. In this study, we present a conceptual model for participation in work environment interventions and apply it to protocols and manuals from 8 participatory interventions to determine the form of participation used in each intervention. We suggest that the conceptual model can be applied in the design and assessment of participatory work environment interventions