Health and Welfare
Sustainable Working Life
Societal challenges such as digitalization, the green transition, and an aging population are expected to result in the greatest changes to working life since the Industrial Revolution. However, there is great uncertainty about what these changes will mean for individual professions as well as for working life.
Contact
Working life plays a central role in Sweden’s economy and in the well-being of its population. The knowledge environment “The Future of Sustainable Working Life” addresses societal challenges connected to working life. In collaboration with civil society, the public sector, and private industry, the research aims to create the conditions for a healthier, more functional, more inclusive, and more sustainable working life.
Our research addresses societal challenges such as:
A sustainable working life
Increased life expectancy and declining birth rates are often presented as arguments for a longer working life by raising the retirement age. A key question, however, is how this can be made possible when lifestyle-related public health diseases increase with age, and when heavy and static work—leading to prematurely worn-out bodies—still characterizes many professions. Furthermore, long-term sick leave due to mental and stress-related ill health is already high. In “The Future of Sustainable Working Life,” we study the success factors, obstacles, opportunities, and conditions that arise around the question of a longer and more sustainable working life.
An inclusive working life
“The Future of Sustainable Working Life” also focuses on the causes and effects of social stratification in the labor market, and on how the exclusion of marginalized groups leads to a negative spiral of low socioeconomic status, poorer health, and increased social problems. We examine how differences—such as those related to gender and ethnicity in the labor market—manifest as unequal working conditions and disparities in wages and career development.
Sustainable organizational change
The pace at which working life is changing today is very high and is expected to accelerate in the coming decades, primarily due to digitalization. This places significant demands on the ability of organizations and companies to evolve through both internal innovation and effective implementation. In “The Future of Sustainable Working Life,” we seek to understand how the public sector and private industry can act for social, ecological, and economic sustainability.
What is a knowledge environment?
Society faces major challenge, so complex that they can only be understood with knowledge and perspectives from many fields at once.
In a knowledge environment, different academic disciplines gather around a societal challenge and, through research and education in collaboration, contribute to a sustainable future.