2nd Edition of the Vital Worker: Towards Sustainable Performance at Work

Dear Colleagues,

Vitality at work is an essential factor for businesses and organizations to create a healthy, engaged, sustainable and productive workforce. Most of what has been written about these topics can be found in practitioner-oriented reports or journals, where they have their basis in today’s practice rather than in theory and empirical research. There is surprisingly limited academic and empirical research on these topics. Organizational and societal relevance of vitality at work is high, particularly with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ageing workforce.

Both vitality at work and employee sustainable performance have become important research issues in the area of occupational safety and health. They have been studied in different scientific fields, such as psychology, sociology, organizational behaviour, business, epidemiology, and medicine. Many researchers in these fields are interested in understanding how to optimize both worker health and well-being as well as employee performance—not only in the short term but also in the long term. For businesses and organizations, the ultimate aim is to have staff consisting of vital and engaged workers, who are presumed to be productive workers as well. For that reason, this Special Issue focuses on sustainable performance at work, too: maximizing worker health and well-being as well as work performance through vitality at work.

Currently, there are many gaps of knowledge regarding the association between vitality at work and employee sustainable performance—antecedents and consequences inclusive; for instance, concerning the potential determinants of vitality at work for different occupational groups, such as older workers, blue-collar workers, ethnic minority workers, and handicapped workers. Other examples concern the pathways linking vitality to sustainable performance, or concern the health effects of interventions targeting vitality at work and/or sustainable performance at work.

We invite you to submit high-quality original theoretical/empirical research articles or narrative/systematic reviews that provide robust new findings extending the current state of knowledge with regard to vitality at work and employee sustainable performance as well as their antecedents and consequences. We wholeheartedly welcome papers related to evidence in different disciplines, such as organizational change, work (re)design, workplace (social) innovation, epidemiology, interpersonal relationships, successful prevention and intervention strategies, as well as etiological research initiatives set in a variety of occupational settings, groups, factors and time period (e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic). Please note that papers will be subjected to a thorough and rigorous peer-review by experts in the field.

Prof. Dr. Jan de Jonge
Prof. Dr. Toon W. Taris
Prof. Dr. Maria C. W. Peeters
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.