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Introduction: Based on the fairytale ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’, the Goldilocks Work paradigm argues that some physical, mental and social work exposure is desirable, but that too little or too much can be deleterious. This contrasts the basic ‘safety at work’ paradigm that positions many work elements as bad for health, and therefore aims at zero exposure. Instead, Goldilocks Work is a way of thinking about work that emphasizes the potential for work to positively impact the health of workers by designing ’just right’ exposures, while maintaining production levels.

Methods: The Goldilocks Work paradigm was first described by the authors in 2018 [1]. Then, it primarily focused on how a ‘just right’ exposure to physical (loading) aspects at work could promote health. This was utilized in intervention studies in e.g. childcare, industrial production, clothing industry, home care and laundromat work. These interventions mainly aimed to investigate and modify aspects of the physical loading (e.g. temporal pattern, intensity and type) during productive work.

Results: Key learnings from these interventions have been that the Goldilocks fairytale is a useful analogy. Workers, supervisors and managers, and occupational health practitioners have been able to grasp the key concept of ‘just right’, and link this to a more interesting, creative and positive way of thinking about work design. Moreover, workplaces have been excited and motivated by the Goldilocks Work paradigm as a fresh approach that is useful for workplace promotion of health. However, results from the randomized controlled trials have not been able to demonstrate beneficial health effects, likely because of issues with long-term implementation of how work tasks are planned, organized or performed in the organization.

Discussion: Based on these experiences, key areas for development are to more explicitly include mental and social work elements, and to widen the array of outcomes. We will also provide further clarity that health incorporates capacity, and explain the curvilinear nature of associations between exposure to work elements and health outcomes as a basis for arriving at what may be ‘just right’. We will develop new methods to strengthen understanding of the Goldilocks concept, build evidence and improve implementation. We will strengthen collaboration with additional disciplines, e.g. research into psychosocial work factors. We will also strengthen the collaborative research community devoted to Goldilocks Work and thus grow capacity to achieve the vision “to enhance global public health and employability by designing productive jobs, which promote workers health and capacity”.

Conclusion: We see a strong potential in Goldilocks Work based on these early experiences and key areas of development.

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