Co-production

The WISHES project aims to put disabled people’s experiences of work and health at the centre of the research on job crafting.

We do this by working with the Co-production Leadership Team in all stages of the research.

“Disabled peoples’ voices matter in this project. That’s why we’ve created a Co-production Leadership team to ensure that our plans can be changed to be more accessible to, and appropriate and beneficial for disabled people”,​ Prof Adam Whitworth, Principal Investigator, WISHES

Some examples of the Co-production Leadership Team’s work include:
• Helping the research team to design the job crafting intervention
• Advising on how the outcomes of job crafting can be measured
• Co-producing guidance on job crafting so it’s available to all employees and their managers

About the co-production leadership team

The Co-production Leadership Team has two sub-groups:

A Lived Experience Group

This group brings together people who have experienced disability in work, or in seeking work. The group has a diversity of health conditions and impairments and a range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. We aim to include people who are often not represented in research.

A disability research and policy group

This group is drawn from Disabled People’s Organisation (organisations run by, and for, disabled people) leaders, as well as disabled individuals with research and policy expertise.

Principles of Co-Production in WISHES

The social model of disability

Our Co-production Leadership Team is founded on the principles of the social model of disability.

The social model says that disability is not simply part of a person but is something imposed on people with impairments and health conditions by disabling barriers or attitudes in society.

The social model recognises the importance of relationships and interactions between individuals with impairments and their environment, both social and physical.

Our research will explore whether a job crafting intervention empowers employees to make changes to their jobs in a way that removes or reduces disabling barriers and attitudes.

Nothing About Us Without Us

The social model emphasises the agency and self-determination of disabled people.

We believe the social model of disability is vital in the field of work and health research.

Too often this research has been done to disabled people by non-disabled researchers. Often health and work research can take a medical model approach and focuses on ‘fixing’ disabled people. Disabled people are not treated as experts in their own lives, and this means that disabled people’s insights about what would improve their working lives are missed.

Co-production is important to the WISHES project because job crafting interventions have not previously been designed and researched with disabled employees.

We believe that working in co-production in research with disabled people means that we can carry out research which is meaningful to their lives and that will produce relevant research findings that can inform policy and practice.

Co-production with partner employers

For employers that partner with us to trial job crafting with their workforce inside their organisation, we will provide everything necessary to run the job crafting trial in your business. WISHES is an applied research project funded by the National Institute for Health and Care (NIHR) and there is no cost to partner employers or participating workers of trial participation.

We would wish to talk with partner employers to discuss how best we should deliver the trial in your business to ensure that it aligns with your organizational structures, existing approaches, priorities and needs.