Exploring Big Data to Examine Employee Health and Wellbeing: A Seminar Series

The proposed seminar series aims to critically explore the possibilities of using Big Data for assessing health and wellbeing risks within organisations and for advancing knowledge on health and wellbeing prediction. This proposal addresses a significant gap in wellbeing and health research and fits well with the national agenda on health and wellbeing. This agenda was stimulated by Dame Carol Black's review in 2008 which has fed into the Health, Work and Wellbeing cross-government initiative that aims to improve the general health and wellbeing of the working-age population.

The proposed seminar series also contributes to the ESRC priority area on 'Data'. The series explores the idea of using some of the huge amounts of digitally captured and other data gathered within organisations (such as from network traffic data, use of specific work-based systems, phone calls, emails, web access, and HR systems) as a 'temperature check' of the organisation's health, and to help identify patterns in work practices that might lead to poor health and wellbeing. This organisational data consititutes 'Big Data' because it is large-scale (terabytes or larger), complex and cannot reasonably be managed by traditional data management or analytical tools. Some of this data is starting to be used by organisations to help them understand their employees (e.g., through analysing pay systems and developing effective recruitment strategies). However, increasingly we realise that the potential of this data for enhancing employee health and wellbeing has not been fully explored.

We focus on IT working practices as modern technologies have spawned not only greater flexibility but also greater work intensification and work extension into leisure time. This 'tech pressure' can leave employees with little time to recharge their batteries, leading to poor wellbeing. Data that indicates unhealthy digital work practices could be used to assess the level of workforce health and wellbeing and to highlight organisations 'at risk' of ill-health. For instance, organisational or departmental data that indicates high levels of work intensification, insufficient breaks or holidays from work or too much time spent at the computer screen, when combined could indicate risk of ill-health and poor wellbeing due to physical and psychological strain and lack of recovery from work. Such data, gathered over time, could also provide insight to the patterns of digital behaviour that relate to health and wellbeing. Thus, findings from Big Data could help us to develop an improved understanding of employee wellbeing processes and provide a unique opportunity to track and combine indicators of wellbeing over time. Of course, such data has its limitations and needs to be collected with employee consent, and must consider ethical and legal concerns. Therefore, this area needs to be critically considered from different disciplinary perspectives.

The seminar series therefore brings together a multidisciplinary network of academics (from Work Psychology, Sociology, Information Science and Law) and organisational representatives from across the UK and beyond to investigate and debate the possibilities, benefits and disbenefits of using Big Data in this way. The multidisciplinary social science focus makes this appropriate for ESRC funding as it falls outside the remit of a single discipline. Each seminar will focus on a key question relating to the evidence for the relationship between IT working practises and ill-health and poor wellbeing, examining the indicators and assessment of health and wellbeing, what data is being used by organisations and what its possibilities are, the benefits and disbenefits of using data for such purposes and the employee perspective on data and wellbeing. The final seminar will also engage policy makers and employee/professional groups within the debate about the lessons learned from the seminar series and directions for future research.

Beneficiaries and Users
The key beneficiaries and users of the findings from this seminar series will be those interested in employee health and wellbeing and those interested in uses of 'Big Data', including organisational representatives (from public and private sector), politicians, civil servants, policy advisers, professional and employee groups, unions and the media. We have already engaged organisational representatives within discussions about this seminar series application and are involving them in it as either speakers or participants (e.g., IBM, University HR, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, O2, Sheffield City Council). Other organisational representatives and members from professional groups and employers groups will also be invited to the seminars (e.g., from British Psychological Society, CIPD, Westminster Employment Forum) alongside parliamentary groups and political/policy making representatives (e.g., Internet and communications technology forum, Health & Safety Executive, The Work Foundation). The views of these non-academic participants and speakers will be incorporated into the findings of the seminar series and will help to shape future research on this topic (through inviting them to be part of a steering group, and to participate in discussions at the seminars and on our website). Such interaction with beneficiaries and users will enable knowledge transfer in both directions, keeping the resulting research questions applied and grounded in real problems whilst also disseminating the academic research that has been done in this area which has implications for using digital data and Big Data for examining employee health and wellbeing. Beyond those directly involved in the seminar series, there will be wider beneficiaries within society more generally who will be reached via the press releases and social media outputs of the seminar series. The outcomes of the seminar series will be of most relevance to those who are interested in or have a role specifically related to employee health and wellbeing and the use of 'data' within their organisation.

Impact
The beneficiaries and users will benefit from being directly involved in the seminar series itself. This will be through attending and being involved in discussions at the seminars and/or through taking part in online discussions and receiving summaries, viewing weblogs and podcasts of the seminar presentations and discussions. They will also have access to the final report that outlines the lessons learned from the seminar series and areas for future research. They will benefit by learning from academics and non-academics about issues relating to the examination of employee health and wellbeing through digital data and Big Data, which they can incorporate into their own policy and practice. The impact will also reach wider than those who were directly involved in the seminar series as through our social media presence, practitioner pieces (e.g., in The Conversation, Guardian Comment) and press releases we aim to reach a wider audience. In all outputs we will provide details of our website so that others beyond the seminar participants can benefit from the summaries, reports, weblogs, podcasts and details of ongoing activities and research.

Those beneficiaries that become part of the steering group at the end of the seminar series will have the opportunity for ongoing influence of the research agenda and will receive the most direct impact from any future research conducted in this area. This is because they will have the most direct relationship with the researchers such that the academics can help to influence their organisational practice and policy making more directly.