PhD Study : ‘Job-Bot’ Sustainable ‘Ageing At Work’ Intervention

Summary

Government policy on extending working lives will require people to work longer due to ageing demographics and fiscal challenges around pension availability.  Workforce crises are observed in Health and Social Care sectors and the NHS with growing concerns about workplace mental health and early retirement of health and social care staff on health grounds (CMO 2015; CIPD 2018). Innovative methods including technological solutions can provide interventions with specific populations that need to be firstly developed and then tested.  Digital interventions (DIs) are any intervention that is accessed on a computer or mobile phone. DIs have been created to help with, for example, weight loss, smoking, anxiety management and other mental health issues. Artificial intelligence chatbots are conversational agents that facilitate conversation between a human and a computer using learning capabilities.

Chatbot applications are an attractive proposition for human resource interventions and mental health care as they can provide cost efficient time and location independent guidance and counselling without long waiting times. Chatbots for personal and sensitive issues and health and well-being are often considered favourable in terms of privacy, ‘impression management’ and anonymity that prevents stigmatisation and judgement. Presently, chatbots can complete semantic analysis of the text that the user inputs, to provide a more tailored response.

Chatbots offer polylingual, timely independent guidance and counselling to those suffering from anxiety, nervousness, isolation, sadness or sleeping disorders. This technology can be tailored to job related issues, well-being at work, career and retirement planning. Whilst chatbots rely on words only and can attempt to track mood, non-verbal communication like emotion, body language and eye contact are omitted and these are often of key interest in establishing and dealing with mental health issues. Emotion Recognition technology, has the capacity to detect low mood, anxiety or mental health concerns using facial emotion recognition, eye tracking and machine learning approaches.  Quantitative and objective diagnosis support engagement of people, examining their emotional responses and reflecting on different psychological conditions.

This study aims to use knowledge and understanding on issues related to workforce ageing, health and wellbeing concerns and intention to leave work at varying stages of one’s career to develop a ‘Job-Bot’ Digital Intervention to provide a sustainable intervention to support individuals to monitor health and well-being, and provide career long advice, guidance and counselling on health and well-being at work and options to healthily extend working life.

Objectives:

(1)To analyse existing relevant demographic information, attitudes to ageing at work and self-reporting planning around retirement, intention and plans to leave work or extend working life, from cross sectional data from social workers (McFadden 2018), nurses and midwives in the UK (Gillen and McFadden, ongoing);

(2) To develop intellectual capital to inform the production of ‘Job-Bot’, a sustainable product to support individual workers to enhance well-being at work and exercise informed choice about how to healthily extend working lives;

(3) To lead to publications in esteemed journals on the production of Digital Technology for workforce intervention with evidence to inform extending (PfG) government working lives

Essential criteria

Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class Honours Degree in a subject relevant to the proposed area of study.

We may also consider applications from those who hold equivalent qualifications, for example, a Lower Second Class Honours Degree plus a Master’s Degree with Distinction.

In exceptional circumstances, the University may consider a portfolio of evidence from applicants who have appropriate professional experience which is equivalent to the learning outcomes of an Honours degree in lieu of academic qualifications.

• Research proposal of 2000 words detailing aims, objectives, milestones and methodology of the project

Desirable Criteria

If the University receives a large number of applicants for the project, the following desirable criteria may be applied to shortlist applicants for interview.

• A comprehensive and articulate personal statement

Funding and eligibility

The University offers the following levels of support:

Department for the Economy (DFE)

The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the Home rate and a maintenance allowance of £19,000 (tbc) per annum for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance).

This scholarship also comes with £900 per annum for three years as a research training support grant (RTSG) allocation to help support the PhD researcher.

• Candidates with pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, who also satisfy a three year residency requirement in the UK prior to the start of the course for which a Studentship is held MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance.
• Republic of Ireland (ROI) nationals who satisfy three years’ residency in the UK prior to the start of the course MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance (ROI nationals don’t need to have pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme to qualify).
• Other non-ROI EU applicants are ‘International’ are not eligible for this source of funding.
• Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Due consideration should be given to financing your studies. Further information on cost of living