Projects

A questionnaire-based research project aimed at understanding how workers across Australia are experiencing changes to their work, and how well prepared they are to face future changes.

The Thrive at Work Leadership Masterclass Series aims to empower and upskill leaders in the mining sector to identify risk factors across the full spectrum of mental health specific to the needs of their organisation, plan for change, and take evidence-based preventative action to address the needs of its unique workforce. FOWI will conduct detailed needs analysis through participant interviews and survey to gain a deeper understanding of contextual factors within the mining sector to investigate causes of specific psychosocial risks most prevalent amongst mining workers and clearly define and articulate the challenges facing the sector in supporting the mental health and well-being of its workers. This initiative will also facilitate the growth of a Community of Practice that can form the foundations of on-going capacity building efforts to support employee well-being across the mining industry. To further support the Mining sector to create mentally healthy work, a industry specif

The Centre for Transformative Work Design (CTWD) and the Future of Work Institute (FOWI) will partner with Swick Mining to better understand the workforce and to support the organisation to design meaningful motivating work. This partnership will occur through the SMART survey, which measures employee perceptions in relation to the design of their work. The survey also provides an understanding of current employee well-being and perceptions of key organisational practices that impact employee well-being and work design.

Collaborative intelligence involves a humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) working interdependently towards a shared goal, where ongoing interaction between the human and the AI is required. Advances in the field of AI mean that in the future, collaborative work will be possible that maximises the strengths of humans and AI to achieve higher performance than either actor can achieve alone. This PhD will explore what skills human workers will need to work collaboratively with AI. This question has two elements. First, there are likely to be specific human attributes and skills (e.g., logical thinking, explicit communication) that facilitate collaboration between the human and AI. Second, the development of collaborative intelligence will enable new types of tasks to be automated, thereby requiring human workers to add value using the skills required in tasks where they still have a comparative advantage. By identifying the contexts within which collaborative AI is likely to be requi

The Future of Work Institute (FOWI) at Curtin University is looking to partner with the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment (DAWE) to build on, and co-create, a high-level mental health and well-being strategy to support and embed a truly thriving culture. This partnership will look to provide a clear way forward by capitalising on our Thrive at Work framework to support the development of a strategic approach to employee mental health.Thrive at Work AuditFOWI will facilitate the Thrive at Work Audit via a number of workshops. The audit takes stock of the activities and practices the organisation has across numerous functions that impact on employee well-being.

The Centre for Transformative Work Design (CTWD) is seeking to again partner with the ATO to elevate their work design capability, and design a tailored approach to embed work design principles into the existing workforce strategy, design and review process. CTWD would like to build on the work completed in our 2019 partnership with a focus on building broader organisational capability to proactively support positive work design practices and promote mental health and wellbeing, both through existing human resources processes and at the organisational level.

The Future of Work Institute will engage with the City of Adelaide to collect employee perception data about organisational activities related to mental health and wellbeing. The results will be presented via individual and organisational dashboards in the Platform.

'Over the previous three years, researchers from the Curtin University Future of Work Institute have been conducting research with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC (BNHCRC) on effective recruitment and retention practices for volunteers in the emergency services. This project is a research utilisation piece, funded by the BNHCRC, that will translate the major findings and insights from that research into a format that is accessible to emergency management volunteer manager.'

Project involves Professor Sharon Parker's SMART work design model. An assessment of work design within teams will be undertaken through survey methodology. In addition, leaders will be presented the results, alongside a training session aimed to upskill leaders in how to design meaningful work for their teams.

The Future of Work Institute will engage with the Mental Health Commission to undertake a Thrive at Work audit to collect information on activities relating to employee mental health and wellbeing. The information collected will be analysed by the Future of Work Institute, and presented back to the organisation alongside a number of key recommendations.

The Thrive at Work in Mining Masterclass Series aims to empower and upskill leaders in the mining sector to implement the Thrive at Work framework to guide organisational practices in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of its workforce. FOWI will conduct detailed needs analysis through participant interviews and survey to gain a deeper understanding of contextual factors within the mining sector to investigate causes of specific psychosocial risks most prevalent amongst mining workers and clearly define and articulate the challenges facing the sector in supporting the mental health and well-being of its workers. This project will also compile 3 industry-focused case studies based on how mining organisations have actioned learnings, used Thrive at Work in Mining toolkits, and addressed challenges that can be shared with other industry professionals as a part of on-going capacity building efforts to support employee mental health and wellbeing across the mining industry.

With work teams having to undertake more critical and complex tasks, this project aims to develop and evaluate a new process model of team motivation emergence through field studies using varied samples of workers, simulation studies, and computational modelling. The project expects to generate solutions to Australia's declining work engagement by answering calls for research on how to develop team motivation. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of team motivation disseminated through scholarly and practitioner-oriented publications and presentations, as well as practical team assessment and training tools made available to organisations so they can improve team performance.