Towards a successful career research - Brief for study participants

Your workplace is participating in a research project called “Towards a successful career”, carried out by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH). The project is funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund, FIOH and participating companies. It began in August 2020 and ends in March 2023. We are now inviting employees between the ages of 18 and 30 (fluent in Finnish) to participate in the second phase of the study. Supervisors will distribute this research brief in the units participating in the “Towards a successful career” study.

A separate brief has been written for supervisors at the workplaces, available on the project’s website.

At the previous phase, the study collected information on young employees’ well-being at work and experiences related to supervisory work. On the basis of the collected data, a new coaching method has been developed, aimed at supporting young employees’ well-being at work and developing their competence. The study assesses the impacts of the new coaching. About 400 employees from four different workplaces in Finland will participate in the impact assessment. In addition, a separate training has been developed for supervisors, and its impacts will also be studied.

Study participants will be provided with information and support for promoting their well-being at work and competence development. Other Finnish workplaces will also later benefit from the methods developed in the project. The aim is to support young employees at the beginning of their working careers as well as their supervisors.

Participation in the study is voluntary. You have the right to withdraw from the study at any stage. The study is carried out during working hours and you will not receive any separate compensation for it. The study runs from 1 April 2021 to 29 March 2023.

Progress of the study:

1. The study will begin with an electronic initial questionnaire for employees who agree to participate in the study.
2. FIOH will randomize the employees who have filled in the initial questionnaire into two groups, the first of which will be invited to FIOH’s online coaching focusing on well-being at work and competence development (duration: 3 x 3 hours). The employees in the second group will get a handbook on similar themes. The employer will inform the employees of their group.
3. All employees participating in the study will again fill in questionnaires on two occasions: approximately one and seven months after the initial questionnaire.

In addition to background information, the questionnaires include questions about work, work community and well-being at work. They are carried out using the Webropol application. One questionnaire takes about 15 minutes. Participants will fillin the questionnaires during working hours and can respond on a computer or mobile device either in Finnish or English. Follow-up surveys can alternatively be conducted as a telephone interview (duration approx. 5 minutes), in which case the researcher calls the participant by telephone and saves the answers given by the person participating in the study by telephone in the Webropol form. The questionnaires are used for assessing the impacts of the online coaching and the handbook. If filling in the questionnaire raises concerns regarding your own well-being, you can contact the occupational health care services of your workplace, if necessary.

The employees randomly selected for the group coaching will participate in FIOH’s online coaching during working hours. The employer will inform the employees of the date and time. The group coaching will be carried out using Microsoft Teams or Zoom software. Teams and Zoom are free, easy-to-use group communication applications, which run on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices. In addition, participation requires an internet connection and either a mobile device (smartphone/tablet) or a computer. All group coaching participants will be provided with instructions in advance, including information on which software (Microsoft Teams or Zoom) will be used.

Approximately 5–10 employees from the same company participate in one coaching group. Meetings will take place during working hours in Finnish.

The meeting themes are:

1. Your own strengths and skills at work
2. Preparing for challenges at work and during the working career
3. Means for achieving your own goals

The employees randomly selected into the second group will get a handbook in Finnish, focusing on well-being at work and competence development. The handbook contains information and tips on identifying your strengths, using a personal network, preparing for challenges at work and during the working career as well as setting your own goals.

The progress of the research will be reported on the research project’s website: 

Onnistuneesti työuralle

The study results related to the impact of coaching and training will be presented in the final report of the project to the Finnish Work Environment Fund, in reports for the participating workplaces, in scientific publications and seminars, and at other events of the research project.

All information provided by you during the study will only be made available to the FIOH researchers, who are bound by a duty of confidentiality. Information about an individual employee will not be given to the employer. All results of the questionnaires will be reported at group level only, in such a way that individual participants cannot be identified. As regards the questionnaires, the results will be reported on the level of the entire research data for all participating workplaces, so that no individual’s responses can be identified. Confidentiality and data protection are described in more detail in the Privacy Notice, which can be found on the project’s website.

The Finnish Institute of Occupational Health is an independent research, development and specialist organization in the field of occupational health and safety. It also promotes the wellbeing and working careers of people of all ages. For more information on the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, please visit www.ttl.fi/en