Psychosocial vocational rehabilitation in a world of work 4.0-Between demands and needs

Background This study provides insights into the work demands associated with the "world of work 4.0" as well as employee needs from the perspectives of clients, staff, and executives of an Austrian work integration social enterprise (WISE). The WISE offers two main types of rehabilitation and support programs for individuals with psychological health conditions: 1) counselling and assistance programs, and 2) training and employment programs. Methods The study employed a mixed-method design, using both quantitative (online survey) and qualitative methods (semi-structured interviews). N = 620 clients and N = 188 employees from of the rehabilitation programs were invited to take part in an online survey on work demands and employee needs. The response rates were 40.81% (n = 253) among clients and 54.79% (n = 103) among employees. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted among six executives. Results The results demonstrate that, with respect to the future labour market, participants feel that it is important to develop competences related to new technologies and resilience, but also to train social competences. Employees and clients in counselling and advice programs evaluated the support (provided by the WISE) in achieving methodological competences, resilience, and social competences more positively as compared with employees and clients in training and employment programs. The latter, however, evaluated the support in achieving manual skills more positively. Conclusions for practice In general, the rehabilitation programs do well in fostering social competences and resilience among their clients, but need to improve their promotion of media competences. Participants' needs can hardly be satisfied through the future labour market, especially the need for low-demand work and the needs for autonomy and personal growth. Additionally, the executives noted that in the future labour market, many jobs in the production sector would be cut, jobs would become more complex, and high technical know-how would be required. They feel that these trends will make it more difficult to place participants into first labour market employment. Accordingly, it would be especially important to secure the second labour market.