The Positive Side of Occupational Health Psychology

Book excerpt: This book serves as an introduction to the Nordic approach to Occupational Health Psychology and illustrates how this perspective can be transferred to a global audience. It discusses a joining of attitudes from Positive Psychology accompanied by experiences drawn from the Nordic work/life context. Over the decades, Nordic countries have gathered a great deal of experience on the meaningfulness of work, work engagement, presenteeism, absenteeism, job crafting, work family balance, intervention and reorganization. These experiences are explained and offered as a different approach to Occupational Health Psychology, while avoiding the more traditional detrimental topics such as stress, conflict burnout and poor well-being. Instead the authors discuss subjects such as engagement, healthy change, prosperity and welfare and are applied to the current ideas on Occupational Health Science. This book shows that using interdisciplinary observations can help our understanding of modern worker health. It offers gives readers an opportunity to consider how a combination of good work and good health can be stimulated in theory and in practice.