Tytti Alho, a student of VAMK’s master’s degree program Management and Development in Health Care and Social Service wrote her master’s thesis about mental wellbeing of immediate superiors in organisation change. The thesis was inspired by the Vaasa University of Applied Sciences’ project Mindful Managers. The thesis examined in more detail the mental well-being experienced by the immediate supervisors of the social and health care sector, and the stressing elements that affect it. In addition, the paper examined how change situations affect the mental well-being of immediate supervisors. The aim of this research was to increase the awareness of the factors that put load on the immediate superiors´ mental wellbeing and offer methods that can support the immediate superiors´ mental wellbeing. The research is quantitative and the material was collected with an electronic questionnaire. The research was participated by the social and health care services department in the City of Vaasa, Vaasa Central Hospital and Vanha Vaasa Hospital. The number of immediate superiors participating in the research from these organisations was 78. The quantitative material was analyzed with SPSS -statistics software. The student used as a basic mapping one of the recordings from group discussions made for the IO1 Research Framework of the project.

“On the basis of results it can be said that immediate superiors´ work is challenging. At the present, the immediate superiors´ mental wellbeing is on a fairly good level and they are positive to change. Constant interruptions, changing circumstances, and a lack of time and resources put pressure on the immediate superiors. The employers should focus on those immediate superiors who are at the beginning of their career, those who work a lot of overtime or to those who have previously had challenges with mental wellbeing. The upper management in the organisation can improve the experienced level of mental wellbeing among the immediate superiors and thus less load is put on the immediate superiors and the ability to deal with changing situations improves.”

The thesis presentation was on 29th of November at Alere VAMK. The thesis is published in Theseus database: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202001201436