Despite increasing efforts to design and implement interventions to prevent and manage exposure to work-related violence, the existing literature primarily focuses on healthcare or on a single dimension of an intervention’s impact. This study aims to address these gaps through systematically reviewing international evidence on interventions from various sectors. A Rapid Evidence Assessment approach was adopted which allowed the review of best practice, including the often-disregarded grey literature. 84 papers met the inclusion criteria, including literature reviews, experimental and qualitative impact assessments, and policy reports and guidelines. These represented the healthcare, transport, police and prison, and service sectors, and fell in three categories: (i) behavioural/ interpersonal training; (ii) organisational and administrative interventions, and (iii) environmental design. The review shows there is no ‘one-size-fits all’ when addressing the complex and multidimensional incidence of work-related violence. Best practice involves the design of evidence based comprehensive approaches that specifically address risks in unique settings. These approaches should be actively supported by management and prioritise employee involvement. We introduce a framework that summarises best practice at different stages of the intervention cycle – preparation, screening, action planning, implementation, and evaluation – that can guide the implementation and research of work-related violence interventions.

It is estimated that around 160,000 households in Britain experience homelessness each year, although no definitive statistics exist. Between March and September 2020, as part of the initial ‘Everyone In’ government response to COVID-19 in England, 10,566 people were living in emergency accommodation and nearly 18,911 people had been moved into settled accommodation. However, some forms of temporary accommodation may not be suitable as shared facilities make it impossible for people to adhere to government guidelines to reduce the spread of COVID-19. This is parallel group, pilot randomised controlled trial. The target is to recruit three local authorities, each of which will recruit 50 participants (thus a total of approximately 150 participants). Individuals are eligible if they are aged 18 and over, in a single-person homeless household, temporarily accommodated by the LA with recourse to public funds. Participants will be randomised to receive settled accommodation (intervention group) or temporary accommodation (control group). The intervention group includes settled housing such as Private Rented Sector (low and medium support), Social Housing (low and medium support), and Housing First (High support). The control group will maintain treatment as usual. The follow-up period will last 6 months. The primary outcome is to assess the feasibility of recruitment, retention, and acceptability of trial processes against progression criteria laid out in a traffic light system (green: all criteria are met, the trial should progress as designed in this pilot; amber: the majority of criteria are met and with adaptations to methods all criteria could be met; red: the minority of criteria are met and the pilot RCT should not proceed). Secondary outcomes include assessment of completeness of data collection at 3 and 6 months and percentage of participants consenting to data linkage, as well as a process evaluation and economic evaluation. This trial will address feasibility questions associated with progression to a fully powered effectiveness trial of models of housing to reduce risk of COVID-19 infection and homelessness. ISRCTN69564614 . Registered on December 16, 2020.

The high economic and social burden of poor physical and mental health among workers calls for strategies to support and protect workforce health. Monitoring occupational health and wellbeing through the consistent and systematic use of data is considered to contribute substantially to designing evidence-based policies that improve outcomes for workers. The purpose of this paper is to expand on current efforts to enhance monitoring practices by introducing a novel approach to developing a composite Health and Wellbeing Index (HWI). HWI can combine a range of areas (for example, sickness absence, exposure to health risks, key health and mental wellbeing) based on valuation methodologies from health economics. The cost of different outcomes to companies, individuals and society is identified using Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) methods. These costs are compared with estimates of the value society attaches to preventing a fatality to arrive at weightings that reflect each HWI component's monetary equivalence to the cost of a fatality. Based on this method, different components are transformed into comparable units and are added together to calculate a headline metric. A version of HWI that is tailored to the needs of the rail sector in Great Britain was developed in collaboration with the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to drive improvements in the sector's performance. The new index can be used to track progress over time, benchmark against best practice, identify areas for improvement and develop a robust evidence base for policy design and investment decisions.

Policymakers need to enforce regulation and act to improve working conditions and workers' well-being, write Victoria Mousteri, Michael Daly and Liam Delaney

RATIONALE:Symptoms of mental health problems have been shown to predict adverse labour market outcomes including unemployment, but no studies have used sibling models to examine the relationship between clinically diagnosed psychiatric conditions in adolescence and subsequent unemployment. OBJECTIVE:This study used extensive Swedish registry data to investigate the link between psychiatric conditions diagnosed during military conscription and unemployment over two decades. Further, we identified whether this relation was amplified during an economic downturn and tested whether it was affected by adjustment for unobserved family characteristics using sibling fixed-effects models. METHOD:Psychiatric conditions were diagnosed by psychologists and psychiatrists at military conscription in sample of 929,191 Swedish men (mean age = 18.4 years) between 1969 and 1989. The average number of days unemployed per year was observed from 1992 to 2012, using the records of the Swedish Public Employment Services. RESULTS:After adjustment for physical health and childhood socioeconomic status those diagnosed with any psychiatric condition experienced approximately an additional 10 days per year unemployment compared to others. Alcohol (16 days unemployment) and other substance use disorders (17 days) were the strongest predictors of exposure to future unemployment, followed by personality disorders (10 days), neurotic and adjustment conditions (nine days), and depressive disorders (six days). Family background factors accounted for approximately half of the observed relationship between mental health conditions and unemployment. Psychiatric conditions interacted with macroeconomic conditions such that those with pre-existing alcohol-related, and neurotic and adjustment disorders were disproportionately more likely to become unemployed following the 1990s crisis in Sweden. CONCLUSIONS:Adolescent mental health conditions forecast an elevated risk of unemployment, which endures over the life course and is amplified in times of economic uncertainty. Investment in youth mental health services and alcohol and substance use prevention programs may yield economic benefits by reducing unemployment.

Background: The share of workers who work part-time because full-time jobs are not available remains larger compared to the period prior to the 2008 crisis. For part-time workers, being available to work more hours than offered may have negative mental health implications. Method Drawing on two nationally representative British surveys, we tested whether working less than 30 hours per week while preferring to work longer hours (underemployment) is associated with increased psychological distress. Distress was assessed using responses to the 12-item General Health Questionnaire in both samples. Results: In the National Child Development Study (N = 6,295), propensity score estimates indicated that the hours-underemployed workers experienced higher levels of psychological distress (beta = 0.25, p < 0.001) than full-time workers matched on observable characteristics, including prior distress levels. Fixed effects estimates using 18 years of the British Household Panel Survey (N = 8,665) showed that transitioning from full-time employment to underemployment predicted an increase in distress levels (beta = 0.19, p < 0.01). Conversely, transitioning from underemployment to full-time employment forecasted a reduction in distress (beta = -0.18, p < 0.001). On average, job earnings and perceptions of job security explained a small (approximate to 10%) portion of the potential psychological impact of hours-underemployment. Conclusions: These findings highlight the possibility that underemployment among part-time workers may have detrimental psychological consequences. Policy interventions geared towards improving career opportunities for part-time workers would potentially ameliorate losses in psychological well-being experienced by this group.

Past unemployment may have a pervasive psychological impact that occurs across nations. We investigate the association between unemployment events across working life and subsequent psychological well-being across 14 European countries. Additionally, we consider the influence of between-country differences in labour market institutions and conditions on the cross-country well-being effects of unemployment. Data detailing life-long employment trajectories and contemporary life conditions are drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. The well-being impact of unemployment is modeled using linear, multi-level specifications. Each six-month spell of past unemployment is found to predict reduced quality of life and life satisfaction after the age of 50, having adjusted for a broad range of individual and country-specific covariates. In contrast, the impact of past unemployment on depression is explained by individual demographic factors. We identify the first comparative long-term evidence that unemployment welfare scarring may be a broad, international phenomenon.

Victoria Mousteri, Michael Daly, and Liam Delaney outline how underemployment affects well-being. They find that underemployment predicts meaningful increases in distress in two UK cohorts - an effect that is reversed when the underemployed find full-time work.