Abstract
Sickness absence from work due to experienced distress and mental health issues has continuously increased over the past years in Germany. To investigate how this alarming development can be counteracted, we conducted a randomized controlled trial evaluating a job coaching intervention to maintain the working capacity of members of staff and ultimately prevent sickness absence. Our sample included N = 99 employees who reported mental distress due to work-related problems. The intervention group (n = 58) received between 8 and 12 individual job coaching sessions in which they worked with a professional job coach to reduce their mental distress. The control group (n = 41) received a brochure about mental distress. Data were collected before the start of the study, at the end of the job coaching intervention, and at a 3-month follow-up. These data included the number of sickness absence days as the primary outcome and questionnaire measures to assess burnout indicators, life satisfaction, and work-related experiences and behaviors. Compared with the control group, the results indicated no reduction in sickness absence in the intervention group but fewer depressive symptoms, a heightened ability of the participants to distance themselves from work, more experience of work-related success, less depletion of emotional resources, and a greater satisfaction with life when participants had received the job coaching. Thus, although we could not detect a reduction in sickness absence between the groups, job coaching was shown to be a viable intervention technique to benefit employees by contributing to re-establish their mental health. We discuss the implications of the study and outline future research.
Highlights
Work-related mental distress can often develop into more severe forms of mental illness that require therapeutic interventions and cause longer periods of sickness absence
Based on encouraging individual placement and support (IPS) research [5, 6] and the results reported by Duijts et al [12], we aim to investigate (a) whether job coaching can reduce the number of sickness absence days at a 3-month follow-up and (b) whether job coaching improves the mental health of employees who feel distressed
We evaluate the concept of an IPS-based job coaching intervention for mentally distressed employees
Summary
Work-related mental distress can often develop into more severe forms of mental illness that require therapeutic interventions and cause longer periods of sickness absence. Encouraging results regarding the effectiveness of job coaching have been reported for people with mental disorders receiving individual placement and support (IPS) interventions [4,5,6] to reintegrate them into the job market. It may be more effective to prevent people with mental illness or strain from losing their jobs in the first place. In this regard, supported employment interventions are often used in clinical practice and represent an established tool to help distressed employees maintain their jobs [7]. IPS-based job coaching, as a specific supported employment tool, may represent a measure that companies could introduce in order to sustain the ability of their workforce to work viably [8,9,10]
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