Promoting Worker Wellbeing in Digital Workplaces: Health, Safety, and Sustainable Organizational Practices

The transformation of the modern workplace through digital technologies is profoundly influencing how work is organized, managed, and experienced. Remote and hybrid arrangements, collaborative platforms, AI-enabled coordination, and digital monitoring tools have enabled new levels of flexibility and autonomy but have also contributed to intensified work rhythms, blurred work-life boundaries, and persistent expectations of availability. Within this context, the intersection of digitalization and occupational health and safety has emerged as a critical concern. Evidence shows that digitally mediated work environments can amplify psychosocial risks, including technostress, digital fatigue, burnout, and social isolation, which, if unaddressed, threaten worker mental, social, and physical health. Despite the proliferation of digital working arrangements, gaps remain in understanding how digital tools, work norms, and organizational practices can be intentionally designed to create healthier, safer, and more equitable digital workplaces.

This Research Topic aims to advance understanding at the nexus of digital transformation, occupational health and safety, and organizational work design. Specifically, it seeks to explore the mechanisms through which digital work restructures job demands, resources, coordination practices, and the balance between control and autonomy. The primary objectives are to generate insights into how organizations can proactively prevent “always-on” expectations, safeguard psychological detachment and recovery, and develop roles, workflows, and leadership strategies that support sustainable employability and fair participation in digital work settings. Moreover, the Research Topic encourages exploration into how policies and interventions can address persistent inequities—such as gendered care responsibilities and flexibility stigma—and foster diverse, inclusive support for all digital workers.

The scope of this Research Topic is intentionally focused on organizational, psychosocial, and work-design perspectives on sustainable digital work, explicitly within the boundaries of occupational health and safety. To further the dialogue on digital work and worker wellbeing, this collection welcomes articles addressing—but not limited to—the following themes:

o Work design and job quality in digitally mediated work (role clarity, workload distribution, autonomy–control);

o Remote, hybrid, and flexible work organization (including coordination across time zones and teams);

o Boundary management and work–life balance (“always-on” culture, availability norms);

o Work intensification and accelerated work rhythms (meeting load, time pressure, interruptions);

o Technostress and digital tool implementation quality (usability, training, support);

o Psychological detachment, recovery, and sustainable performance in digitally connected work;

o Workaholism and risks of over-engagement in digital environments;

o Digital monitoring and algorithmic management (perceptions of control, fairness, trust);

o Equity and inclusion in digital work (gender, care responsibilities, stigma, career progression);

o Leadership, HR policies, and organizational interventions for safe, sustainable digital work (right-to-disconnect, team agreements, best practices).

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: digital workplaces, digitally mediated word, remote work, hybrid word, work-life balance, technostress, digital tool implementation, digitally connected work, digital environments

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.