Grant: Healthy and Productive Work - Partnership Grants

Mental Health (MH) related leave accounts for nearly 30 per cent of short- and long-term disability claims, yet many suffer in silence. The combined effects of absenteeism and presenteeism due to MH issues has been estimated to account for more than $6 billion in lost productivity costs.(6) Given their knowledge service role, these presenteeism and absenteeism can be uniquely challenging for professional workers. Indeed the negative consequences extend not only affect relations with co-workers and employers, but, with the broader public in terms of accessibility to and quality of services. Negotiating leaves of absence and return to work can be particularly difficult when potentially stigmatizing MH issues are involved and when work culture and structure constitute insurmountable barriers. Although MH-related presenteeism and absenteeism are areas of growing concern for professional/knowledge workers, they are seriously understudied, particularly from a comparative perspective. The role gender plays is also conspicuously absent as an explicit focus. Addressing absenteeism and presenteeism across a range of workers, we ask: - What are the mental health experiences of professional/knowledge workers causing them to take or contemplate taking a leave of absence from work? - What are the key factors causing them to leave work -- with a focus on personal, family and work context -- and which of these factors are most influential in fostering their return to work? - Which of these key factors prevent others experiencing mental health issues from taking a leave?Reflecting an explicit gender perspective, we will examine how the barriers, facilitators and experience of contemplating and negotiating leaves of absence and return to work are gendered at the level of the worker and their profession. We also ask what interventions can mediate these gendered experiences.Our Partnership will be the first interdisciplinary, collaborative, comparative research initiative investigating and addressing the gendered experiences of MH, LoA and RTW for regulated professional/knowledge workers. We bring together academic researchers, worker representatives, unions, professional associations, employers, service providers, insurers, policy-makers, and other stakeholders across the following domains: 1) healthcare, including dentists, midwives, nurses and physicians; 2) education, including professors and teachers; and 3) accountants. In addition to cutting across sectors, these groups of workers also differ by work context and gender composition. We take an explicit gender perspective in the collection and interpretation of the data gathered, which we will augment with a broader intersectionality lens and life course approach. A mixed methods approachPage 2 will capture the complexity of the issues, involving qualitative data -- documents, observations and interviews with the range of stakeholders -- augmented with quantitative data from available administrative and newly developed survey datasets. These components will inform targeted case studies and evaluations of ongoing interventions drawing upon the input from our participating stakeholders. Comparing across knowledge worker groups, locations and using mixed-methods allow us to address the complexity of the phenomena for a truly ground-breaking research program. We will integrate our partners throughout the entire research process beginning with co-developing the research foci, accessing existing and collecting new data, interpreting the findings, and translating the knowledge into more effective and equitable leave of absence and return to work policies, practices and programs. We will contribute to the development, implementation, and scale-up of evidence-based and gender-responsive interventions.