June 16 2026 (11:45 – 12:30) – Employee Well-being, Threats, and Solutions – Research and Practical Tools

Despite numerous ongoing and anticipated changes in work-life, employee well-being remains both a significant challenge and an opportunity for the sustainable success of organizations and societies. To a certain extent, each workplace contributes either to the flourishing or suffering of its employees based on factors such as culture, leadership practices, and proactive and adaptive behaviors. Typically, much can be achieved at the workplace level. A starting point for supporting workplaces in fostering health and well-being is to provide tools that offer reliable research information about well-being and ill-being.

Firstly, I will present some key findings from our ongoing “How is Finland Doing?” Survey launched three months before the pandemic outbreak. The results indicate that the well-being of young adults, and more recently middle-aged employees, has been notably concerning. Moreover, burnout among leaders has increased likely causing broader negative impacts in organizations.

Our findings also suggest that teleworking may have a dual nature. The surge in remote work following the pandemic has led to lasting changes not only in organizational structures but has also challenged community spirit and well-being, increasing feelings of loneliness. Conversely, teleworking has provided flexibility in work arrangements and in balancing work with family or non-work activities. Interestingly, we discovered that teleworking is associated with reduced exhaustion yet positively correlated with two other burnout symptoms: mental distance and cognitive impairment.

Second, I will provide a brief overview of our recent longitudinal research focusing on what I would call key indicators of employee well-being: work engagement, burnout, and job boredom. I will present findings regarding how these states are associated with two increasingly critical concepts of our time: loneliness and hope. Loneliness is a negative experience of discrepancy between one’s actual and desired levels of social relationships, whereas hope is a positive motivational state characterized by motivation and determination to pursue goals and the ability to identify the necessary pathways to achieve those goals. Furthermore, work engagement research celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. I focus on what is known of its positive consequences and particularly about its relationship with workplace social courage, defined as intentional, deliberate, and altruistic behavior to do what is right for an organization or colleagues, despite the risks for the actor.

Finally, I will briefly introduce three practical tools for assessing employee well-being, which are freely available and accessible in English. Based on a joint clinical validation study of burnout conducted in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Finland, we at FIOH developed a web-based tool using the traffic light model to assess burnout at both company and unit levels, providing feedback to individuals as well. Additionally, more than 120,000 Finns have completed the “How are you feeling? Well-being at work” test, which covers topics such as work engagement and burnout. The third tool, “The Caring Workplace,” developed by HelsinkiMissio, focuses on combating loneliness at work and provides practical steps for workers, their coworkers, leaders, and occupational health professionals.

Weblink is here (NB! participants online are not able to ask questions). 

June 17 2026 (11:45 – 12:30) – Capturing Work Life in Real Time: Innovations in Intensive Longitudinal Methods for Occupational Health Psychology

Intensive longitudinal methods (ILM) such as daily surveys, experience sampling approaches, and ecological momentary assessments have become often-used tools in occupational health psychology (OHP). Over the past decade, their application has grown exponentially, driven by technological innovations (e.g., smartphone-based data collection), methodological advancements (e.g., accessible data-analysis software), and an increasing interest in dynamic processes. Generally, ILM capture real-time fluctuations in individuals’ experiences, behaviors, and physiological states, enabling researchers to disentangle intraindividual variability from stable interindividual differences. This approach is particularly attractive for OHP as phenomena such as stress, coping, recovery, and work engagement fluctuate from day to day and even from hour to hour.

In this keynote presentation, I will discuss recent advancements in ILM, organized into three main themes: (1) Innovative study designs, including just-in-time adaptive interventions, within-person encouragement designs, and measurement burst designs; (2) approaches to test and improve data quality challenges, with a focus on compliance, careless responding, and measurement reactivity; (3) advanced data-analytic approaches, highlighting person-centered approaches and models that explicitly account for temporal dynamics, such as dynamic structural equation modeling, continuous-time structural equation modeling, and multilevel growth models. I will illustrate each theme with empirical examples from OHP. The presentation will conclude with actionable recommendations for OHP scholars who want to incorporate ILM into their research portfolio and get the most out of it.

Weblink is here (NB! participants online are not able to ask questions).