Worklife Ergonomics in Digital Co-Creation: The ‘What’, the ‘Why’ and the ‘How’

Abstract

Service improvement (“servitisation”) and digitalisation are two megatrends that affect healthcare and public services along with other sectors in general. A new model is needed to prescribe how governance in an increasingly changing world of modern healthcare could be undertaken in a successful manner by embracing the power of Co-Creation. The concept of good worklife ergonomics is studied, both as a prerequisite, the ‘What’, and as a success factor in this context, the ‘Why’. This article proposes that the moderating, risk mitigating, factor of broadly based employee involvement in all phases from planning and design to implementation will greatly improve quality in both innovation-process, and outcomes. A case-study from a public homecare living lab eHealth-project in Norway is visited to highlight some of the challenges ahead. Having established that employee co-creation can contribute to successful digital transformation of healthcare services, the ‘How’ question is studied. The question of how to enable effective employee co-creation is under-researched. Employee participation in co-creation is stated as an important enabler of digitalisation and service improvements. The Nordic Model for employee participation has proven successful for enhancing working life effectiveness and innovation. This article propose that these principles of employee participation can be further enhanced by using web 2.0 technologies for Enterprise Social Networks. The article concludes with a discussion of consequences for the digital transformation of healthcare services as well as implications for research and practice.