Work for sustainability: Case studies of Brazilian companies

• Companies considered sustainable includes work-related aspects in the TBL framework.
• Deployment of the strategy does not lead to the full dissemination of sustainability.
• In the work design phase tasks are defined independently of the sustainability discussion.
• Changes in work are not explicitly considered during the introduction of sustainability policies.

The introduction of strategic corporate sustainability policies is expected to result in the improvement of several issues in companies. One of these issues is work, which should involve greater well-being for workers. Within the context of production engineering, this research connects sustainability and work-related issues, the latter seen in light of the discipline of ergonomics. Based on case studies conducted at four companies considered sustainability benchmarks, we examined how the introduction of the theme of sustainability has influenced work-related issues. The elements analyzed here were the corporate sustainability strategy, organizational practices for deploying the strategy, and the work design phase. The last element is the moment in which work is prescribed in the organization. The results show that, despite the announcement of the inclusion of changes in work, there is not any explicit evidence confirming that such changes are considered as a requirement for corporate sustainability projects.