The project proposal focuses on the future development of the human workforce, with the aim of exploring critical aspects related to its future development. The technological advances have significantly reshaped industries and lead to the emergence of novel job roles and unimagined employment opportunities that were just until recently unimaginable. The anticipated changes in the labour force will therefore require a corresponding change in the skills, competencies, and capacities of people actively participating in the labour market. In addition, it is critical to address the compelling task of reshaping workplace dynamics and prioritizing workforce well-being, as this aspect becomes increasingly important, especially in the face of labour shortages. By taking a comprehensive view of these interrelated aspects, it becomes imperative to address all of the above elements in order to maintain global competitiveness of European countries in an ever-evolving world and contribute to the necessary transformation of the labour market. The project will engage stakeholders in meaningful discussions about future workforce development, the project enables their participation in the policy-making process, which allows for an exchange of views and the co-creation of Europe's future through their valuable contributions. The project will also strengthen participants' awareness of their rights and knowledge of EU policies by examining and sharing lessons learned and best practices related to labour market challenges.  In sum, this project seeks to contribute to empower individuals with relevant skills and knowledge, and foster an environment that encourages sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work future for all.

The overall aim of this project is to promote the mental health and well-beingof students at Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, based on the Stepped Care model, developed in the program for the promotion of mental health in higher education - ACCES Program. Focusing on a promotion and prevention approach, and adopting a logic of collective participation, the following specific objectives are identified: 1. Development of mental health promotion, prevention and adjustment activities (level 1 and 2), with a view to improving skills related to mental health literacy, mental resilience and stress management; 2. Strengthening psychotherapeutic and psychiatric responses for students with common mental disorders of mild to moderate severity (level 3), with a view to early intervention and avoiding more serious pathologies; 3. Strengthening the mechanisms for identifying situations of risk or serious mental illness and referring them to specialized health services (level 4 and 5); 4. Promoting the active participation of the student association in the development, implementation and evaluation of activities;5. Inclusion of students with specific educational needs and other vulnerable groups (1st year students, displaced students, national and international students, students benefiting from school social action, scholarship students from PALOP countries, women students, and LGBTQIA+ students), across the board in the activities developed.

HumAct is a 3-year project funded by the Erasmus + Program Capacity Building for Higher Education and is coordinated by ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa., with partners: the National and Kapodistriana University of Athens, the University of Cape Verde and the University of Santiago, Cape Verde and the Pedagogical University, University of Pungué and University of Rovuma, Mozambique. The main objective of the project is to increase the capacity of higher education institutions in the area of ​​Humanitarian Action (HA) in relation to climate change and displacement in partner countries, specifically in Cape Verde and Mozambique, in collaboration with institutions in program countries, such as Greece and Portugal. The specific objectives are: • Increase the response of higher education with regard to content relevant to HA • Promoting research by teachers and students regarding HA • Develop teachers' pedagogical strategies • Strengthen community involvement

Over the last decades, social and emotional learning (SEL) has been increasingly acknowledged to impact on competency areas such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships skills, and responsible decision-making. Mindfulness training is a multimodal intervention informed by the principles of positive psychology, with a central focus on skills that enable more effective coping and stress reduction. The application of mindfulness-based practices (MBP) has been strengthened by the results of evaluation studies that typically report on the positive effectiveness of MBP in terms of SEL. In parallel, research results show that exposure to natural environments arouses positive emotions and stress recovery, and improves compliance to mindfulness training, making it more effective. As such, the role of nature in the workplace is receiving increased attention, and existing theory and research suggest that nature contact can be considered as a workplace strategy for reducing stress, while at the same time enhancing performance and overall well-being. Therefore, Mindfulness-in Nature-based practices (MiNBP) joins together the healing effect of nature and the distressful effect of MBP, with greater benefits. It is therefore essential for company’s managers to understand how MiNBP has the potential to benefit their staff towards a systematic approach to SEL, in particular when considering the perspective of the five-competency-area framework.   

General Objective: Work-related stress is now widely recognised as a significant problem as its costs can involve high levels of sickness absence, accidents, errors, low morale and poor performance. Work-related stress is conditioned by, and contributes to, major environmental, economic and health problems. It has a significant impact on the well-being of staff, their productivity and effectiveness, and much of it is likely to be preventable. Given the exponential increase of work-related stress issues and the diffusion of depression among the European citizens, the WELLy project aims to set the role of Work Well-being Manager (WWM) in charge of making sure that daily working conditions are fair and as healthy as reasonably possible for every employee so that the overall quality of life at work improves within the organisation and across economies. Specific Objectives: The proposal aims to encourage a proactive approach and highlight the major role managers can play in reducing the problems of stress. For this reason the profile of Work Well-being Manager will be introduced: he/she has a cross-functional role which leverages psychological skills including diversity management, particularly when it comes to disabled persons as they often require specific adjustments of their work environment. On top of this, the Work Well-being Manager cooperates with other departments to analyse the issues caused or that could cause work-related stress, and to reduce psychosocial risks and improve employees’ commitment and engagement.

Developing Competences for Stress Resilience @SMEs (DeSTRESS) aims to provide an innovative VET-based solution to this problem. Building on existing research, partners will develop a VET curriculum supported by an innovative VET Digital Training Platform using the latest techniques in game-based training and gamification, complemented by a set of practical tools and resources to facilitate the transfer of learning into the workplace. This environment will expose the main psychosocial health risks and their real impact on the individuals’ life and on the companies’ productivity. Players will assume roles, enabling them to think back on their experiences with these specific situations and how it happened, and which solutions are available for each scenario. Besides raising awareness on the problem, the project outputs will enable owner, managers and even decision makers to plan for and to mitigate its occurrence and the negative consequences of work- based stress. For that purpose, both a policy report and recommendations will be produced. A network of facilitators will also be created as an open forum to debate these issues. As such, the project will contribute to strengthening key digital competences in initial VET while preventing the inherent hazards. 

Psychosocial Risks prevention was identified as a key priority and the recognition of the significant changes in the work context contributed for emphasizing Emergent Psychosocial Risks - EPR (e.g., precarious contracts, ageing workforce, and family-work conflict) (EU-OSHA, 2007). The contextual factors and risk management practices critical for prevention have been evidenced in research and support the European policy and national strategies and obligations. However, ESENER survey reveal that these policies did not yet consolidate into generalized good practices (EU-OSHA, 2010, 2012). It is also acknowledged that social dialogue is a key factor for improving quality in work (EC, 2003), implementing participative solutions and empowering the stakeholders increase the success of the preventive actions. The accomplishment and positive outcomes of this involvement require that the stakeholders have opportunity to participate and that their perspectives are taking into account. The current societal and economic crises amplified the threats related to psychosocial risks. In this context SMEs are more vulnerable and also facing bigger challenges for initiating, maintaining and improve prevention initiatives. The present action intends to contribute for an efficient promotion of knowledge dissemination and offer an informative toolkit for preventive actions towards EPR that SMEs are facing, cross industry and cross sector.  This will be achieved using social dialogue with different formal stakeholders.  Action specific objectives are:  Map the SMEs knowledge about EPR; Identify best practices and main obstacles perceived by SMEs Stakeholders; organize a workshop with stakeholders to disseminate and debate knowledge, action plans and a tool kit; develop a tool kit that can be easily used by SMEs. The action targets SMEs in four European countries that are facing severe societal challenges due to the economic crisis (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

The project ORCAB, involving 10 partners from nine countries, aimed to benchmark the organisational factors influencing the well-being of health professionals, quality of hospital care and patient safety. A multi-centre study, partners hailed from Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Turkey and the United Kingdom.ORCAB profiled the specific factors of hospital organisational culture that increase burnout among physicians, and monitored physician burnout and its association with quality of hospital care. The team then identified appropriate bottom-up solutions to these problems and developed a network for stakeholders to communicate about interventions to improve the quality of care.The project succeeded in meeting many of its goals. ORCAB built a website as an ongoing resource for stakeholders, providing guidance on how to reduce job burnout. The team also completed 10 systematic reviews that provided evidence-based data on these issues, and identified successful interventions.Other accomplishments include country-by-country reports on the targeted concerns in rarely studied countries. Although interventions were not developed for these countries, ORCAB did complete case studies based on qualitative and quantitative data. These case studies may be used as the basis for interventions in hospitals.ORCAB also identified three gaps in the assessment of organisational culture, quality of care and medical error. To fill these gaps, the project developed three scales to measure these variables. These tools have already contributed greatly to the field. Finally, a European network of hospitals has been established to further disseminate project findings.Through its work, ORCAB has already improved the working conditions of more than 3 000 health care professionals. With plans in place for providing consultation to clinics and hospitals interested in change, ORCAB hopes to bring about further reductions in physicia...

More and more human beings experience in their lives persistent pain for months or years, not necessarily associated with any kind of injury or disease. International epidemiological data shows that an average of 35,5% persons experience chronic pain (CP). Moreover, 11% of adults experience severe and incapacitating CP. War against pain has a relatively recent international and national history. In Portugal, only in the last decade efforts have been made to overcome the under developments in such area of research. Nevertheless, a lot of work is left undone. In fact, pain has been one of the most neglected topics of research in the history of medicine. It was only after the Gate Theory (Melzack & Wall, 1965) that pain, traditionally seen as a linear and direct response to noxious stimuli, became conceived as a biopsychosocial phenomenon. Sex and gender studies on pain experiences are a field of research that clearly look for integrating psychological and social factors in accounting for pain experiences. Such was the general main contribution of this project. Starting from evidence that pointed to sex-related differences in pain, this project bridged a gap between two distinct lines of research which seldom crossed: 1) control-related beliefs and coping literature, which is predominantly individualistic and psychological  and 2) gender studies, which add a sociological and psychosocial perspective. The project started with a general approach on how health practitioners and the lay public viewed CP and gender issues. Specifically, we aimed at analyzing gender role expectations people may have on pain control and pain coping.  Next, we investigated the role that gender role expectations played in shaping health technicians’ perceptions of patients and their suffering, and ultimately, their pain assessment and management strategies. Both quantitative (experimental studies)  and qualitative (grounded-theory) methodologies were used in this project.   ...