Recovery in a digitalized world : An inductive qualitative case study on employers’ and employees’ perceptions of digital solutions to promote recovery

Abstract: Recovery from work is crucial for health and well-being, and organizations have an obligation to enable employee recovery. Organizations can promote employee recovery by implementing strategies and thus reach sustainable development. In 2020, organizations exist in a digitalized world, which has expedited the need to implement digital solutions and use them for processes. Encouraging and fostering recovery are central elements in promoting recovery and digital solutions could help with both elements.The usage of digital solutions include how digital solutions are used and how they could be used. There is no previous research on digital solutions, recovery promotion and usage, so we define our research phenomenon as the usage of digital solutions to promote recovery. We identify our research gap in the connection of recovery and digital solutions in an organizational context. By describing the research phenomenon, we can fill this research gap and thus add to the existing literature on organizational health and well-being. The purpose of this research is to describe organizations’ usage of digital solutions to promote recovery.By performing an inductive qualitative case study, we collect data by performing a documentation review and online surveys. We find that mobile applications, virtual assistants, activity trackers, virtual reality and smart electric bicycles can be used to promote recovery. We also find a favorable context for both recovery and for digital solutions to promote recovery. Further, we see potential for using the identified digital solutions to promote recovery. We conclude that strategy implementation consisting of digital solutions to promote recovery in organizations will lead to a higher level of healthy workforce.