Background

Research Programme on The Future of Work and Well-being

The traditional Finnish model of employment and welfare is under pressure from a number of changes. Over the past decade, the escalating trends of globalisation (increasing economic openness), ICT development and population ageing have had a major impact on the organisation of work and welfare. Together with the continuing development of technology, increasing economic openness and international competition have led to rapid changes in various fields of production.

Not only the nature of work, but also the organisation of work and the ways in which labour is used in the workplace have all been changing. Jobs have been relocated in foreign countries and the labour market as a whole has become less stable.

The rapid ageing of the population will continue to adversely affect the dependency ratio and increase the need for health care and social services as well as for informal care. These developments have revealed inflexibilities in the existing social security system in terms of its ability to guarantee a subsistence income to all citizens. They have also raised concerns about the continuity of welfare state funding and prompted calls for a higher employment rate and higher labour productivity in the national economy.

At the same time, the demand for labour has changed and structural unemployment has increased. Fixed-term employment is increasing, and it has become much harder for young people to get onto the first rung of the career ladder. Increasing job demands, the reorganisation of social care services and expectations of equal participation by men and women in both wage employment and in the care of children and other family members all have an impact on reconciling work and welfare.

With the growth of life expectancy it is thought that people will also be spending more and more years in active employment, even though the significance of wage employment and the appeal of working life in general have been dwindling.

Furthermore, the traditional model is coming under increasing pressure with the breaks and shifts caused by education and training, unemployment, family leave or rehabilitation. People's life courses used to be very straightforward and homogenous; they went to school, moved on to wage employment and then retired, but all that is now becoming more fragmented and diversified. Inequality among citizens is also increasing. All this is putting today's welfare and health policies under mounting pressure.

Aims

There is extensive research into questions of work, welfare and well-being going on in many different disciplines today. The research challenge involves transcending the boundaries between research in the humanities, social sciences, economics, psychology and health areas and strengthening multidisciplinary research into work and well-being. The objective of the programme is to reinforce interdisciplinarity and focus research on new problem areas.

The programme's central aim is to gain a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of the relationships between work, welfare and well-being and to develop new innovations that can help resolve problems in these relationships.

At the macro level, one of the programme's key concerns is with the question of how economic and employment growth can be reconciled with social cohesion. How can improvement of Finland's external competitiveness be reconciled with the objective of increasing the well-being of employees?

What is the optimal way of producing well-being and employment that can guarantee not only economic efficiency, but also social justice, physical and mental health and social partnership and democracy?

This harks back to the original Lisbon strategy and its aims of reconciling growth, jobs and cohesion.