OVERVIEW
Work is intrinsically linked to health and well-being. The dynamics of employment, unemployment, and other forms of income generation have direct effects on the well-being people with lived and living experience of substance use. Importantly, considerations related to criminalization, surveillance, stigma and discrimination, worker safety, impairment and poverty are required to optimize the social, economic and public health benefits for people whose substance use and work trajectories intersect.
OBJECTIVES
The overall objectives of this initiative are to develop evidence-based substance use policies, programs and protocols to reduce substance-related harms and improve employment outcomes for workers while supporting employers and improving occupational outcomes. Specific objectives include:
- Understanding the occupational, health and well-being impacts of substance use, substance-use related harm and workplace substance use policy and programming.
- Identifying points of intervention in employment, health system and well-being trajectories to support prevention, harm reduction, treatment, recovery, staying at work and return-to-work.
- Developing a community of practice with reach to pool multi-sectoral expertise, identify and disseminate best practice, center lived and living experience and expertise, and coordinate knowledge mobilization and reform efforts.
The initiative for work and well-being focuses on multiple research areas. These include work on adaptive employment, where work is adapted to the needs and preferences of workers, as well as a range of occupational sectors that bear a disproportionate burden of drug-related harm. Sector-specific work initially focuses on trades, construction and natural resource management, with front-line care and the service industry as planned areas of future work.
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ADAPTIVE LABOUR MARKET MODELS TO ADDRESS BARRIERS TO WORK
Past research at the BCCSU And elsewhere has reinforced the link between work, health, and well-being. Building on this, researchers sought to understand the experience of individuals with lived and living experience with substance use as they accessed community-based opportunities specifically designed to promote economic engagement. Using data collected between 2019 and 2024, the Assessing Economic Transitions (ASSET) Study worked closely with community partners and collaborators to specifically focus on experiences of adaptive employment (commonly called low-barrier employment).
Through thousands of longitudinal survey-based and long-form interviews, researchers found that most individuals not only want to work, but they also want increased hours, equitable and adaptive compensation, and opportunities for high quality work, skill development, and advancement. Despite this desire, participants experienced significant barriers to initiating and maintaining work.
Key barriers identified include:
- Organizations providing adaptive opportunities face considerable resource constraints that impact the quantity, quality, and diversity of opportunities they are able to provide.
- The structure of social support and regulations around income assistance, which most participants received, created significant challenges.
For example, support amounts were insufficient and required individuals to seek out other income sources to “top up” their monthly support payment. However, income assistance regulations, particularly those linked to earnings exemptions, created significant obstacles to increased economic engagement. Individuals limited their hours, lowered their pay expectations, and spent considerable time and effort ensuring they were not subject to retrenchment of their income assistance or of ancillary benefits (e.g., nutritional or transportation supplements).
Given preliminary study findings, the ASSET Study team presented some key policy, program, and practice recommendations:
- Support the scale-up of low-threshold economic engagement opportunities
- Expand access, equity, and protections across the spectrum of employment
- Revise and annually review the structure of income assistance regulations
- Build avenues for coordinated action across government, organizational, and community actors
- Strengthen organizational systems that support worker input and experience
- Tailor employment practices to meet community needs
There are numerous, complex, and intersecting structural and systemic barriers that make conventional labour market engagement inaccessible to many populations who, in spite of these limitations, want to work. Filling this gap, adaptive economic engagement serves the critical function of making meaningful, supportive, and flexible work accessible to individuals who may otherwise find themselves unemployed or in employment that may be unsustainable, or that may expose them to conditions that undermine their health and well-being.
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SUBSTANCE USE, WORK, AND WELLBEING IN THE TRADES AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRIES
Drug-related harms in the ongoing toxic drug crisis do not impact all groups equally. People working in the trades and construction industries in British Columbia bear a disproportionate burden of substance-use related harm. While industries have taken action to address workplace substance use, there is a concerning lack of independent, action-oriented research in this area.
Specifically, widespread consultation has identified a number of key areas where research is needed to support access to and uptake of evidence-based substance use disorder treatment as well as stay-at-work, recovery, and return-to-work pathways. Recently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a new program of research led by Dr. Lindsey Richardson (UBC Sociology and the BC Centre on Substance Use) and Dr. Chris McLeod (UBC School of Population and Public Health and BC Partnership for Work, Health and Safety), seeks to mobilize and advance positive health, well-being and occupational trajectories in this critical sector. This research seeks to support workers, unions, employers, clinicians, and policy makers to take action that reduces substance use-related harm and improves occupational outcomes in the sector.
In addition to currently funded research into work and wellbeing for people in the trades and construction, there remain other industries where there is a disproportionate burden of drug-related harm, including natural resource management, health services and the service industry. In seeking to address where substance use and work trajectories often collide, with devastating impacts, this research seeks to support concrete action to improve worker well-being and cultivate opportunities to improve substance use and work trajectories.
This research is currently in development, if you would like to be involved, please contact the research team directly.
Read more here.