Researchers have identified 32 concrete features of a job that make up "healthy" work, spanning work-life balance, job design, pay, security and employee voice — and the £1.5 million project behind the framework is asking employers to treat job quality itself as a health intervention.

The "Creating Healthy Jobs" project, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, inverts the usual workplace health question. Instead of asking how to keep people working once they become ill, the researchers are examining how employers can design jobs that help people stay healthy in the first place. For HR teams, the output functions as a checklist for job design reviews, shift scheduling policy and flexibility practices.

The University of Warwick leads the research, with colleagues from the University of East Anglia, Cardiff University and the University of Birmingham. The team is also building an online resource to explore how better job design could improve the nation's health, reduce inequalities and keep more people in work.

The 32 elements are grouped across seven areas. Concrete recommendations include implementing flexible working, planning shifts in advance, limiting excessive working hours and reducing unnecessary out-of-hours emails. The full list is publicly available on the project's website.

Other suggested shifts are organisational rather than structural: creating opportunities for staff to interact with each other, enabling people to see how their work improves customers' lives, and considering ways to improve how work is delivered. None of these require clinical intervention; they are decisions that sit squarely with line managers, workforce planners and HR.

The 'tipping point' framing

Professor Chris Warhurst, director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick and the project's principal investigator, framed the stakes bluntly.

"The high rate and cost of job-related ill health have been described as a national crisis," he said.

"What matters is finding the tipping point between jobs that are bad or good for health. Let's not only debate how we keep people working, but how work can keep people healthy too."

He added: "By understanding what makes work healthy, we can help employers and policymakers create jobs that support both wellbeing and long-term economic prosperity."

What comes next

The project's next phase will explore how healthy jobs vary across sectors, regions and demographic groups — a useful distinction for multi-site employers, since a job that supports health in one context may not in another. The aim is to help employers and policymakers better understand how healthier work can improve workforce health.

The researchers then intend to produce a practical "roadmap" for creating healthier, more sustainable jobs, which could give HR leaders a structured tool for auditing roles against the 32 elements rather than relying on wellbeing initiatives bolted onto poorly designed jobs.