New Work – New Health: Die Rolle von digitaler und selbstorganisierter Teamarbeit für eine gesunde Arbeitswelt

The world of work is changing. Due to digitalization, work is increasingly being carried out in digital and self-organized teams to enable rapid responses to complex tasks. Additionally, there is a shift toward flatter hierarchies. Leadership is increasingly complemented by self-organization. At the same time, the number of sick days in Germany continues to rise. Against the backdrop of rising work-related absenteeism and the shift toward digital, self-organized teamwork, a new questionnaire instrument was developed and validated as part of this study: the HOT (Health Oriented Teamwork) instrument featuring the Teamcare scale. This tool builds upon the well-established leadership instrument HoL (Health-oriented Leadership) with its Staffcare scale. The data were collected as part of a joint research project between Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, since 15/11/2024 Universitätsmedizin Göttingen and a software company from the automotive sector. The data collection took place between June 24 and July 9, 2024, with a sample size of (n = 1594) participants. The Health Oriented Teamwork instrument comprises 22 items distributed across three subscales: Awareness, Value, and Behavior. To validate the questionnaire instrument, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. These analyses confirmed the three-factor structure of Awareness, Value, and Behavior with good to excellent internal consistency. Teamcare is negatively correlated with burnout and positively correlated with health status and psychological safety. Multiple regression analyses show that Teamcare (team support) has a significant additional influence on burnout, general health status, and psychological safety, alongside Staffcare (support from leadership). It appears to be crucial to not only consider the health-promoting role of leadership but also the health-promoting role of the team. Overall, the findings emphasize the importance of Teamcare and Staffcare for health, with Teamcare seeming to make a stronger contribution to reducing burnout and promoting psychological safety in self-organized teams. Furthermore, the moderation analysis revealed that Teamcare has a particularly strong positive effect on psychological safety when Staffcare is low. In other words, when employees perceive little support from their supervisor, Teamcare becomes especially important. This newly developed instrument enables ongoing monitoring of health promotion within teams, for example as part of the legally mandated psychological risk assessment. Potential risks can be identified early, and targeted interventions can be derived accordingly.