A third of UK workers report their job is harming their mental or physical health, yet no one has systematically calculated the true cost of unhealthy work to the NHS, employers, and the state. This matters because poor job quality—low control, insecure contracts, unmanageable demands—is a known driver of illness and health inequalities, but the UK lacks a standard way to measure it or a robust method for tallying its economic burden. The project will define what makes a job healthy or unhealthy, map how these patterns differ by occupation, sector, and region, and model the cumulative costs of bad jobs versus the benefits of good ones. If successful, the research could give policymakers and businesses a concrete framework for redesigning jobs as a form of preventive public health—fixing the work, not the worker. The team will test this in two sector- and region-specific cases, producing tools that employers can use directly. The ultimate change would be a shift from treating work-related illness after it occurs to preventing it in the first place, reducing strain on the NHS and improving population health at scale.
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Research questions RQ1: How can jobs be made healthier? RQ2: What work and employment practices constitute healthy and unhealthy jobs? RQ3: What inequalities in job-related ill health exist by type of worker, occupation, sector and UK region? RQ4: What are the costs of unhealthy jobs to individuals, employers, the NHS and the state? RQ5: What are the costs and benefits cumulatively of healthy jobs? Background Work-related mental and physical ill health is a national crisis with significant costs for individuals, employers, the NHS and the State, though a robust methodology for calculating these costs is lacking. Suboptimal job quality has a huge impact on morbidity, mortality and productivity. Poor-quality jobs also link to health inequalities. By contrast, good-quality jobs support good health. The task is to develop a conducive model of jobs that generates preventative improvements to public health. Aims and objectives Using a new standard measure of job quality, the aim of this project is to better understand the links between job quality and health, with the objective of leveraging job quality to create healthy jobs in the UK. It provides a new preventative, integrated, multidisciplinary approach that focuses on mental and physical, short and long-term health, that recognises the multidimensional nature of jobs and seeks to fix jobs, not workers. Methods Bound by strong PPIE engagement, the project comprises six integrated work packages, each with specific aims, methods, outcomes and outputs. All WPs contribute to answering RQ1; individual WPs address the other questions. WP1: provides project operational management and works with a high-level Strategic Advisory Group. WP2: establishes common cross-disciplinary understanding of health and work to provide mutual understanding and conceptual commensurability of health and work for the project and the academic, public, policy, practitioner communities more widely. WP3: reviews existing multi-disciplinary evidence to identify what aspects of jobs makes them healthy and unhealthy, and constructs ideal types of healthy/unhealthy jobs. (RQ2) WP4: analyses health inequalities by type of worker, occupation, sector and region, provide new, enhanced understanding of health inequalities related to jobs. RQ3 WP5: develops innovative modelling to provide robust estimates of the costs of unhealthy jobs and benefits of healthier jobs to individuals, employers, NHS and State. RQs 4, 5 WP6: translates knowledge into policy and practice through PPIE, developing a framework to support businesses to create healthy jobs generally, with two sector and regional test cases. Timelines for delivery The project will last for two years; two work packages – WP1 and WP6 – lasting the full two years and others part of the time. Anticipated impact and dissemination The intended impact is to lessen the risks of job-related ill health through a new form of preventative health. In addition, help establish new, sustained national capacity-building with other work and health researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The academic and non-academic outcomes and outputs will result in physical and digital assets, e.g. journal articles, reports, policy/practitioner/advocacy briefs supported by social media and podcasts etc., all disseminated through a bespoke communication strategy working with our PPIE partners.
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