H.A.R.M.O.N.Y.

Aim

The H.A.R.M.O.N.Y. project brings together higher education institutions (HEI), providers of vocational education and training (VET), research institutions, small medium size enterprises (SME), and EU-wide network organizations in a joint approach to support European SMEs and their employees to prevent the negative consequences of mental health challenges in today’s workplaces.

Description
Mental health problems affect more than 13 million people in the EU SME employees. Half of EU workers consider stress to be common in their workplace and stress contributed to around half of all lost working days. The other two major mental health challenges are depression and anxiety. The project gives a special focus on those three workplace mental health challenges.
The project aims to contribute to better handling of mental health at SME workplaces:

• Improve the SME employer’s competence to prevent and deal with most common mental health issues among their employees.
• Build the capacity of HEI teachers and VET providers to improve integration of work-related mental health aspects in their programmes and competencies.
• Promote an exchange of good practices among researchers, occupational safety and health experts and service providers, and labour market actors.
• Investigate artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and develop a framework and AI architecture to pave the development of a personalized self-monitoring tool for SME employees with previous history of mental health issues and employees interested in monitoring of their own mental health status and preventing mental health problems.

The project is expected to improve the knowledge and skills of the target groups in the field of mental health at workplaces and create a sustainable concept that can be implemented EU-wide as a collaboration between HEIs, VET providers, research institutions, occupational safety and health experts and service providers, and labour market actors.

The final concept will have 8 training modules related to work-related stress, anxiety, and depression for SME employers to better deal with mental health challenges and an AI models’ architecture for better support employees to predict the eventual fallback of their mental health challenges. All will be available on a specially designed digital platform.

Activities
The project aims to promote better mental health in the workplace of SMEs, based on a structured and coordinated set of actions:

• First, a comprehensive framework will be developed. Through a structured mapping of pedagogical and sector-specific needs, a set of necessary skills and knowledge will be defined, on the basis of which two training programmes will be developed. These programmes will address the challenges faced by SMEs and strengthen higher and vocational education programmes in the field of mental health in the workplace. This research phase will ensure a thorough evaluation of the use of artificial intelligence solutions to offer cutting-edge strategies for predicting mental health problems.
• Specific training tools will then be developed to support vocational and higher education institutions, as well as to support the development of skills in the prevention of mental health problems among employees of SMEs.
• Finally, a digital resource platform will serve as a hub for collaboration between SMEs and educational institutions, enhancing knowledge transfer, training, exchanging good practices and building partnerships.
• All these activities will be evaluated, tested and refined during their design and development phases to meet the needs of the beneficiaries.

Partners