Challenges in participatory primary stress management interventions in knowledge intensive SMEs

While knowledge intensive SMEs have recognized the need for change with respect to productivity and wellbeing, and to some extend have access to tools and methods for enabling this, they still lack process competences and are uncertain about how to approach primary stress interventions and initiate relevant change processes. This paper presents the outline of our research and development project on participatory primary stress management interventions in knowledge intensive SMEs, as well as the preliminary results and related implications. The research and development project is conducted in order to develop an operational model which SMEs can use when they want to initiate participatory primary stress management interventions in their company. The development project builds on a process model for participatory primary interventions in larger knowledge intensive companies and the premises behind this model in combination with other theories which have been used successfully in other interventions.
The project is only in its initial phases in conducting the intervention, but so far the preliminary results indicate that management support and allocation of resources is vital, that internal facilitators are important drivers of the change process and that easy-to-use tools are requested from the involved company actors. Given that the interventions in the selected companies are conducted successfully we argue that a new organizational capability to address work-related stress in a collective and collaborative manner is developed in the participating companies. With a successfully conducted intervention we mean that the companies have been able to implement their own change proposals in a collective and collaborative process. By developing this organizational capability we expect that the companies would be able to repeat the process with new change proposals. The research builds on observations, participatory action research, interviews and surveys.