Editorial

Citation

Ipsen, C. and Karanika-Murray, M. (2020), "Editorial", International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 357-359. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-08-2020-163

Welcome to the new team: next steps for workplace health management

The rapid changes in the world due to new technology, demographic change, pandemics, economic crises or even climate change have implications for the health, well-being and performance of individuals, groups and organisations. For the last 12 years, the International Journal of Workplace Health Management has documented innovative, rigorous and impactful research from all over the world on managing workplace health and creating healthy workplaces.

We are honoured to have been appointed the new co-editors of the journal. We accepted the responsibility to serve in this role with the aim of further supporting the field of Workplace Health Management (WHM). We hope that, under our guidance and team, the journal will become a resource for scholars, practitioners and decision-makers who are interested in or tasked with supporting health in work settings. In this editorial, we want to share our plans, present new developments with the journal and welcome the new team.

Our aim with the journal is to continue to publish rigorous research and practical insights on the management of health, well-being and performance in work settings. We envision healthy workplaces with a management practice that is concerned with workplace health at the strategic level, in the design of work and daily tasks, and how to manage workplace health in a proactive, sustainable way that also supports workplace performance.

Through this journal, we aim to enhance our knowledge of how workplace health can be monitored, protected and promoted in daily practice and the contribution of research in this endeavour. We want to see the journal become a key resource for practitioners, researchers and decision-makers interested in or tasked with supporting health in work settings.

What makes the journal “international”? Being international is about bringing insights from specific contexts to an audience that can apply these learnings in different contexts. The international focus of the journal is reflected in the papers published over the years; the range of countries in which WHM research and practice are conducted and the range of occupational contexts involved. However, the value of research in international settings is in the insights that can be applied to different settings. The focus of communicating research and practice is on the underlying principles and new knowledge that WHM researchers and practitioners can build on and apply, regardless of where they are located. In practice, this may mean discussing the generalisability of findings, or it may be about a more fundamental conceptualisation of work. Some of the best papers in this field extract these learnings and translate them so researchers and practitioners in different contexts can also apply them, thus advancing the whole field. Therefore, rather than displaying national, local and occupation-specific research, we expect that research published in the journal will show conceptual or practical relevance to an international audience.

In a practice-oriented field such as WHM, it is important to have a reciprocal relationship between research and practice to learn from and inform practice. We, therefore, wish to shine a bigger spotlight on practitioner-led papers and have expanded the types of papers that we publish to include more practice-oriented papers. These can be authored by either researchers or practitioners or co-developed by researchers and practitioners.

In addition, it is important to show how the field of WHM can benefit from research and practice. This means that contributions with either a conceptual-only or a mainly empirical focus are important. It also means that reflections on how researchers or practitioners in different settings can apply findings and recommendations to enrich their work are essential to include.

Correspondingly, we have also broadened the types of papers that we can publish and the types of methods that can be used to support the variation in approaches, including the following:

1. Empirical research papers;

2. Conceptual papers;

3. Practitioner papers;

4. Research notes and

5. Viewpoints.

In particular, we welcome articles that describe fundamental issues in WHM or new approaches to WHM, such as:

1. Articles on designing, implementing and evaluating interventions, with evaluation focussing on target outcomes and/or the implementation process.

2. Articles that include the economic evaluation of initiatives, which can provide useful arguments for adopting specific interventions.

3. Articles focussing on the practicalities of implementing theory or knowledge in the field.

4. Articles that consider diversity and inclusion and the experiences of different work groups.

5. Articles developed jointly by researchers and practitioners.

6. Articles focussing on WHM across distances.

7. Articles on WHM competences and organisational capabilities.

8. Articles on designing and applying methods and tools supporting WHM.

9. Articles that discuss established or emergent topics that can be debated from varied viewpoints (i.e. letters or point–counterpoints).

As WHM is expanding as a field, pockets of research topics naturally become consolidated. It would be important to reflect on new developments and synthesise new developments in topics that are highly pertinent to the field and that reflect current concerns in the workplace. Therefore, we welcome proposals for special issues and submissions that reflect diversity and innovation in types of WHM topics.

We would like to offer our thanks to Margaret Coffey, our previous editor, for handing us a well-managed journal and to Lydia Makrides, the first editor of the journal, for launching this needed research and practice outlet in a new but upcoming field. We are also grateful for the continued support of our Associate Editors (AEs) (Michael Ertel, Roberta Fida, Enid Roemer and Masaya Takahashi) and want to thank them for their commitment and effort that they have invested in the journal. We would also like to welcome our new AEs (Claire Hardy, Tanja Kirkegaard, George Michaelides and Janne Skakon) and our new Editorial Advisory Board (Angela Martin, Manal Azzi, Laura Punnett, Caroline Biron, Kasper Edwards, Hélène Sultan-Taïeb, Kevin Daniels, Sir Cary Cooper and Amparo Oliver). Each of these esteemed individuals brings a wealth of knowledge in diverse areas of workplace health promotion, including substantial research and practice experience. We look forward to working with you in taking the journal forward.

With the changes surrounding and affecting workplaces across the world, we find ourselves in a position where there is plenty to interest us and the journal for years to come, and we hope to be the voice that supports research in WHM so it can evolve, improve and respond to the current needs of individuals and organisations.

The Editors

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