Grant: Healthy and Productive Work - Partnership Grants

INTRODUCTION: There are more than 5.6 million employees in Canada with adult/elder care responsibilities and 35% of them are simultaneously employed (2012). Lack of workplace support can result in carer-employees (CEs) leaving the workforce, and/or missed work days, or early retirements which can impact employers in terms of reduced productivity and avoidable costs due to a range of HR issues, such as turnover and absenteeism. Given the gendered nature of both family caregiving and the labour sector, it is incumbent upon workplaces to implement gender-sensitive caregiver-friendly workplace practices (CFWPs) to appropriately accommodate CEs whilst sustaining efficiencies in the workplace. Doing so enhances work-life balance, workforce retention, and reduces health costs. The Healthy, Productive Workplace -- Partnership Development Grant (HPW-PDG) allowed McMaster University to partner with the Canadian Standards Association, among others, to create a bilingual Caregiver Inclusive and Accommodating Workplace Organizations Standard for Canadian workplaces. This HPW-Partnership Grant (PG) will mobilize uptake of the Standard in Canada and abroad, while accruing evidence on the Standard's broader health and economic impacts.GOALS: In partnership with: (i) academic researchers; (ii) a range of diverse, committed partners - representing academia, government, non-government/non-profit, private business/service providers, and labour, and; (iii) collaborators representing various industries, the proposed partnership will disseminate and mobilize the Standard across Canada and the world. We will deliver a sex and gender-sensitive program of research to assist CEs, human resource professionals, unions, workers associations, government organizations, and a variety of employers, to implement the successful uptake of the Standard. RESEARCH PROGRAM: Led by Dr. Allison Williams, a CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health, and the Sex and Gender Champion for the PG, the proposed research program will be executed by a geographically representative group of invited partners and collaborators, together with world-class academic researchers with unmatched expertise in this field. In addition to the internationalization of the Standard (Project 1), where the Canadian Standards Association will follow a specific standards protocol, an international comparative review of CFWPs will be undertaken to provide a baseline for the global uptake. Carers Canada will lead Project 2, which includes a rigorous program of knowledge mobilization and evaluation. Project 3 involves a qualitative assessment of experts, recruited from the Conference Board of Canada, to diagnose readiness to support CEs in Canadian organizations. The results of Project 3 will inform a feasibility study (Project 4), which will be realized in partnership with Habanero Consulting Inc. Working with a host of partners representing precarious workers and cultural minority groups, Projects 5 and 6 will realize the Standard's cultural competency/ safety. RESEARCH OUTCOMES: This proposed research project, which includes a robust knowledge mobilization program, will support new thinking and behavior that will lead to improvements in the economic, social, cultural and intellectual well-being in Canada and internationally. Research capacity will be built, with 29 trainees and 2 emerging scholars integrated in all aspects of the research, governance and partnership. New knowledge about CFWPs will be generated, providing the evidence needed for continued uptake of the Standard, and informing curricula in business management/HR -- both of which will ensure ongoing sustainability of the Standard as a significant intervention in improving healthy, productive workplaces in Canada and abroad.