Future of WORK

As Christopher Brandl and Verena Nitsch, co-guest editors of the special section on the Future of Work in Germany shared, “the future of work concerns us all”. This issue of WORK contains five COVID-19 papers, 25 on assorted topics, and 17 in the special section on the Future of Work in Germany. I thank Drs. Brandl and Nitsch for their leadership in preparing this special section.

The Editor’s Choice article of this issue is, Employers’ attitude, intention, skills and barriers in relation to employment of vulnerable workers authored by Hulsegge et al. Using the Netherlands Employers Work Survey 2014– 2019, the researchers identified employer factors of the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction (“as attitude (negative impact), intention (mission statement regarding social inclusion), skills (human resources policies and practices), and barriers (economic conditions and type of work)”) and compared inclusive organizations where ≥1% of employees were defined as vulnerable workers “people with a disability, the long-term unemployed and school dropouts” to non-inclusive organizations. They found that inclusive organizations reported more positive results on the employer factors with the exception of more negative attitudes; and concluded that, “The more negative attitude might reflect a more realistic view on the efforts to employ vulnerable groups, and suggests that other unmeasured emotions and beliefs are more positive.” The paper underscores the importance of better understanding the future of work for vulnerable groups.

Recently, we held a well-attended virtual meeting of WORK’s Editorial Board. During this gathering, amongst other things, we shared some journal analytics. I thought I would share some of these analytics with you. From the inception of WORK in 1990 until July, 2022, there have been 40,586 citations of WORK content; and 5471 articles along

with148 COVID-19 articles published. WORK’s Impact Factor (FI) increased to 1.803 (2021 Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate). This is a 19,8% increase compared to the previous value. WORK is abstracted/indexed in all of the major databases such as Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus. As for our Editorial Board, WORK is predominantly female (62.5%) which breaks the trend for the majority of IOS Press journals. Research reveals that women are often underrepresented at board level [1] and in the peer-review process [2]. An analysis of the geographical distribution of authors per continent (2019– 2021) revealed that 27.7% of authors are from Europe and 23.3% are from North America and finally, the top viewed paper in 2021 was The role of Yoga in working from home during the COVID-19 global lockdown by Kanupriya, et al.

Please stay up-to-date on WORK’s webinars, blogs and news by going to our website at workjournal.org and following us on social media such as Twitter: https://twitter.com/WORK_Journal and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WORKJournal2016

With kind regards

Founding Editor, WORK

Occupational therapist & ergonomist

kjacobs@bu.edu.

workjournal.org

blogs.bu.edu/kjacobs/