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CHI '26 · Honorable mention · full-paper review · confidence medium-high

Understanding Workplace Relatedness Support among Healthcare Professionals: A Four-Layer Model and Implications for Technology Design

Zheyuan Zhang , Dorian Peters , Lan Xiao , Jingjing Sun , Laura Moradbakhti , Andrew Hall , Rafael A Calvo

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This is a solid qualitative CHI contribution: it turns an under-specified wellbeing topic into a layered model and a set of design concepts grounded in interviews and co-design. The paper is strongest as a descriptive and generative framework for HCP workplace relatedness, not as evidence of intervention effectiveness.

Axes Lens

Rare contribution shape, typical evidence profile. The point here is not a score. It is to show what kind of claim the paper makes, and whether the evidence pattern is unusual or baseline in this 268 -review set.

Review Summary

This paper’s value is in how it reframes workplace relatedness support for healthcare professionals from a vague aspiration into a structured, design-relevant account. The four-layer model—Informal Interactions, Camaraderie and Bond, Community and Organizational Care, and Shared Identity—gives the field a more precise vocabulary for thinking about what “relatedness” means in a healthcare workplace. That is a meaningful contribution because it moves beyond generic social-support rhetoric and toward a layered understanding that can inform technology design. The co-design workshops then extend the contribution by producing eight concepts that instantiate those layers, which strengthens the paper’s generative usefulness for CHI readers. At the same time, the evidence is clearly qualitative and context-bound: the study relies on interviews and workshops with HCPs in a single UK NHS setting, and the authors themselves frame the model as exploratory. So the paper should be read as a framework and design-space contribution, not as proof that any proposed technology improves wellbeing or reduces burnout. The limitations are important and appropriately acknowledged: transferability is uncertain, the model is not yet quantified, and causal claims about interventions are not supported. In short, this is a credible honorable-mention-style paper because it offers a well-grounded conceptual structure and actionable design implications, while staying mostly within the limits of its evidence.

What Changed

Canon before

Prior CHI work on workplace wellbeing and relatedness support has often treated social support as a broad, generic design goal rather than a layered account of healthcare professionals’ workplace relatedness needs.

Departure from common sense

The paper’s design stance is that relatedness support for healthcare professionals should be brief, workflow-aware, and minimally disruptive, rather than framed as a heavy or prescriptive social intervention. That is a useful corrective to intuitive but blunt “add more social features” thinking in workplace technology.

Actual novelty

It contributes an empirically grounded four-layer model of HCP workplace relatedness needs—Informal Interactions, Camaraderie and Bond, Community and Organizational Care, and Shared Identity—and uses co-design to generate eight concepts that operationalize those layers.

Evidence

The paper combines semi-structured interviews and co-design workshops with UK NHS healthcare professionals to derive a four-layer relatedness model and eight design concepts. The evidence supports a qualitative framework contribution and design implications, but not causal efficacy or broad generalization beyond the studied setting.

Limits

Method limits

The study is mostly qualitative and exploratory, with a limited dataset. The model is presented as an exploratory framework, and the paper explicitly notes the need for quantitative measures and confirmatory causal evaluation.

Deployment limits

The findings are grounded in a single UK NHS context with volunteer participants, so deployment claims should be treated as context-sensitive rather than universally transferable. The concepts are design directions, not validated interventions.

Boundary conditions

The authors note that the model does not cover HCP–patient relationships or personal relationships, and that transferability beyond the sampled NHS setting remains uncertain. The work is best read as a workplace-relatedness framework for healthcare professionals in similar organizational contexts.

Manual check: none

Position in field

This sits at the intersection of workplace wellbeing, relatedness theory, and HCI design for healthcare. Its main contribution is to structure a previously under-specified design problem into a layered model and concept space for technology support.

Abstract

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) face increasing occupational stress and burnout. Supporting HCPs’ need for relatedness is fundamental to their psychological wellbeing and resilience. However, how technologies could support HCPs’ relatedness in the workplace remains less explored. This study incorporated semi-structured interviews (n = 15) and co-design workshops (n = 21) with HCPs working in the UK National Health Service (NHS), to explore their current practices and preferences for workplace relatedness support, and how technology could be utilized to benefit relatedness. Qualitative analysis yielded a four-layer model of HCPs’ relatedness need, which includes Informal Interactions, Camaraderie and Bond, Community and Organizational Care, and Shared Identity. Workshops generated eight design concepts (e.g., Playful Encounter, Collocated Action, and Memories and Stories) that operationalize the four relatedness need layers. We conclude by highlighting the theoretical relevance, practical design implications, and the necessity to strengthen relatedness support for HCPs in the era of digitalization and artificial intelligence.