How are Healthy and Sustainable Workplaces for Professionals with Chronic Diseases?

The economic and sociodemographic challenges arising from the globalisation of work and raising the retirement age should determine a joint effort towards greater protection of the health and safety of workers in the workplace contributing to the achievement of the United Nations SDGs. The main objective of this paper is to understand and characterize the healthy work environment of organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and specially better understand the relationship between the dimensions of the healthy work environment and the health situation of the professional (having or not a chronic disease) and its influence of health on work performance. Thus, it is intended to identify positive and negative factors related to healthy workplaces for professionals with chronic disease. Quantitative, cross-sectional and comparative study. It represents a national sample collected in Portugal by the Portuguese Lab for Healthy Workplaces during the years 2022 and 2023.The study involved 4551 participants, 2795 (63,1%) were female. The workers’ age ranged between 18 and 73 years, with a mean of 44.8 years and standard deviation of 10.80, 1349 participants (29.8%) reported having a chronic disease. The Healthy Workplaces Ecosystems Tool was used. Comparing the workers with and without chronic illness in the different dimensions of healthy workplaces, was find that, in general, there are statistically significant differences between the groups. Professionals with a chronic illness report more difficulties and higher risks, with the exception of the telework dimension. Professionals with chronic disease present higher risk behaviours and difficulties in managing stress. Can be concluded that that telework can act as a protective factor for people with chronic diseases, allowing them to reconcile the difficulties caused by the disease with the continuity of the work activity and the support promoted by the work context.