Healthy, resilient and flexible: Co-developing a mental health intervention for and with frontline gig workers: a systems approach

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One thing the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted is the essential role of frontline gig workers - such as couriers, taxi drivers and home carers - in keeping the economies and our lives going, even when everything else has come to a halt. However, many of them work in sectors that are increasingly integrated into the gig economy which tends to categorise workers as self-employed and platforms as technology companies, and hence the latter bear no employer responsibilities. This inevitably leads to insufficient health and safety support for these workers. This is a worrying concern as latest research has revealed that road accidents and reckless driving behaviour are common among those who drive in the gig economy. Systematic reviews about burnout among couriers and carers also revealed high level of burnout and a range of technology associated risk factors. Although the benefits of standardised work pieces on flexible terms is real for some, analysis of large scale surveys shed additional light on the variegated gig worker population. A major pattern in the results suggested that dependency on the platform as a main income source and personal financial strain can exacerbate the mental health penalties of platform work. That is to say, those who struggle financially or with a background which does not afford them more secured employment are more vulnerable to the exploitative practices of the platforms. Hence, the job that frontline gig workers do is in fact high demand, low control, and with minimal support, all of which contribute to job burnout. As the gig economy continues to expand, job burnout has become a major concern which could further affect workers' physical and mental health, safety and wellbeing. Currently, intervention research that targets frontline gig workers and aims to reduce job burnout is scarce. Hence, we propose to fill the gap and develop a system-level digital intervention that will interfere with and interrupt the algorithm of platform systems, in order to prevent excessive work stress. This will be collaboratively developed with key stakeholders, including the workers, platform providers and technology developers, experts and policy makers. We will also actively engage the co-op platforms to co-design the intervention and assess its feasibility. If this is proven feasible within this proposal, we will further engage with this sector and secure more resources to implement it on a larger scale.