Promoting Worker Wellbeing in the Era of Data Economy

Abstract

AbstractThe data economy is expanding, and SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) have found themselves under increasing pressure to digitalise their processes and to adopt data-based solutions for business development. SMEs act in an ever more networked data economy ecosystems with a great number of information systems, digital technologies, and interfaces to learn to keep up with the competition. Digital transformation has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced many companies to take immediate digital leaps without proper preparation.Meanwhile, data economy and digitalisation challenge worker wellbeing in SMEs in an unprecedented way: skills of entrepreneurs and workers related to digitised work seem to lag behind, leaving them with technostress and difficulties with coping and managing one’s own work and collaboration. This has potential for serious negative impacts on structural, social and psychological capital, which all affect the overall wellbeing capital in SMEs.To tackle these issues, Wellbeing at Work from Digitalisation (WWFD) project was established to develop a fair, participatory and sustainable framework for SMEs to build their skills and worker wellbeing in the context of the data economy. It aims at placing the knowledge worker in control of their work by offering tools for building worker wellbeing as wellbeing capital. Based on the initial mapping in Finnish SMEs around Turku region, the toolbox is built around workplace democracy, value alignment, skill development and knowledge sharing to ensure that worker wellbeing is not compromised while encouraging the ever-better acquisition of digital technologies. The toolbox will be piloted in SMEs and refined further, and the final manual for WWFD will be published in Fall 2023.KeywordsData economyData economy ecosystemWellbeing capitalWorker wellbeingWork engagementWorkplace democracyTechnostressDigitalisation