The ARK programme – a participatory organizational health intervention and development of meaning at work and work to home conflict over time for academics in Norway

The chapter aims to present results from a Norwegian university that over a decade has been using the ARK- programme, which is a holistic intervention programme for mental health and wellbeing. We first present the theoretical background and the content and process of the ARK intervention programme with a special focus on the importance of a positive development of work to home balance and meaning at work in order to organise for good mental health and well-being in academia. As the institutions’ intellectual capital and primary assets are the competence and commitment of the academic employees, it is of great importance to work to improve and maintain the experience of meaning and develop sustainable organisations for both tenure and precarious employees in the future. There is also a need for investigating the work to home conflict in the academic context because of increased teaching loads and high requirements for publishing research, at the same time as employees are experiencing difficulties managing all the demands within the official working hours blurring the boundaries between work and home life. Growth analyses were conducted to explore the trajectories of change in Meaning at Work and Work to Home Conflict for tenured and precarious employees over the last decade. The results show a reduction over time in work family conflict and an increase in the experience of meaning at work for both tenured and precarious employees in an organisation using the ARK-programme. Experiences from working with the ARK-programme shows that it is important to facilitate for participation of multiple stakeholders within the organisation and target actions across multiple levels of the organisation to ensure a fit between the needs for improvement and the interventions. To ensure a sustainable development and organisational learning over time the programme is built on the five-phase model of an implementation process which is offering the opportunity for organisational learning by attaining new knowledge on what works (or not), for whom under which circumstances.