Supported employment that works
Work that fits
In a Swiss city, a cooperative shows what suitable work in a team can do for the mental health of disabled people
Years ago, for a large company, I built a skills database used by teams on several continents. It could show what each person was able to do. What it taught me has stuck. Most people are not short of ability. What they lack is a place where their particular ability is wanted.
That lesson came back to me over lunch in a long building in Solothurn. I go to its rooftop restaurant as a guest. The building belongs to VEBO, a cooperative that has spent sixty years creating work for people who receive a Swiss disability pension.
The building tells you what they believe
The new VEBO Solothurn site opened in 2024. It is more than 60 metres long, rises over four levels and cost around 35 million Swiss francs. Its first electric charging points serve VEBO's own transport vehicles. About 450 people work there. On the top floor sits a restaurant, the Genusswerkstatt, with a rooftop terrace of 100 seats and a wide view. Its own site lists a warm and cold lunch buffet on weekdays, a meat menu, a vegetarian menu and a "Werkstatt-Hit", and a barista bar.
On my visits as a guest, I have seen a little more than the website says. The people serving and running the food are VEBO's own staff. There is a card system at the entrance, and in summer an ice cream stand.
Real work, sold to real customers
The figure that stopped me was this one. According to its 2024 annual report, VEBO earned roughly CHF 48 million from industrial production and roughly CHF 51 million in income linked to its social mandate.
Why does that matter for mental health?
People can tell the difference between being occupied and being needed.
The World Health Organization says it plainly in its fact sheet on mental health at work: "Decent work is good for mental health." It goes on: decent work supports good mental health "by providing: a livelihood; a sense of confidence, purpose and achievement; an opportunity for positive relationships and inclusion in a community; and a platform for structured routines, among many other benefits."
How little of that list is about money. Confidence, purpose, relationships and routine are exactly what slips away first when someone is shut out of work.
A 2016 meta review in Australasian Psychiatry by Modini and colleagues came to much the same view: work can benefit wellbeing, "particularly if good-quality supervision is present and there are favourable workplace conditions."
Fit is the quiet part of the job
Aristotle believed we are made to live with others, not beside them. A team gives a person a name in the morning, someone who notices when they are absent, and a share in something finished.
Suitable work is designed. Nobody stumbles on it. It means matching task to person, keeping teams stable, and supervising with patience. My old skills database could list what someone was able to do. It could never say, "We're glad you're here." That part has always belonged to people.
For readers in Aotearoa, none of this needs a Swiss postcode. It needs a few deliberate choices, made with disabled people and their whānau, not for them:
- Treat suitable work as part of care, not an afterthought once treatment ends.- Build teams, not placements. One person alone in a corner is not inclusion.- Invest in supervisors, since good supervision is where the evidence points.
I know VEBO as a guest, not from the inside, and I cannot speak for the people who work there. What it does offer is a simple test for any community. Where, in your town, is the place where a disabled person, or someone living with mental distress, is not looked after but genuinely needed?
References
1. VEBO Solothurn site figures: https://www.vebo.ch/ueber-uns/vebo-solothurn2. VEBO portrait (1,868 staff, 118 apprentices, six sites, private public partnership): https://www.vebo.ch/ueber-uns/vebo-portrait3. VEBO Geschäftsbericht 2024 (building, 912 work places, income mix, 60 years): https://www.vebo.ch/assets/Uploads/Vebo_Geschaeftsbericht_2024.pdf4. Architects' project page (length, levels, cost): https://phalt.ch/de/projekte/vebo-soleure/5. Genusswerkstatt Solothurn restaurant page: https://vebo-genusswerkstatt.ch/restaurants/restaurant-genusswerkstatt-solothurn
6. World Health Organization, Mental health at work, fact sheet: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work7. Modini M. et al. (2016), Australasian Psychiatry 24(4):331 to 336: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26773063/8. Aristotle, Politics I.2 (1253a), paraphrased.
Krisztián Galánthai Fekete is a computer scientist and philosopher in Switzerland, and author of Find Your Meaning in 60 Days (book.drfekete.com).
