About
4D Lean is a workplace innovation organization with over 15 years of direct, on-the-ground experience in analyzing and improving employee wellbeing, engagement, and sustainable employability across diverse organizational contexts.
Building on this long-term practical expertise, we developed the 4D Lean Scan, a structured, prevention-oriented measurement framework designed to identify early risk signals for work-related stress, burnout, and long-term absenteeism. The approach focuses on the interaction between four key dimensions: individual characteristics, generational expectations, organizational context, and the employer–employee relationship. Evidence from practice indicates that misalignment across these dimensions is a major but insufficiently addressed driver of chronic work-related stress and subsequent mental and behavioral non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
Current workplace mental health strategies largely rely on reactive, symptom-based interventions or generic engagement surveys, which typically detect problems only after stress-related conditions have already developed. The 4D Lean Scan addresses this gap by enabling early detection of psychosocial misalignment, with particular relevance for young workers in early career stages, a population shown to be especially vulnerable to stress-related health deterioration and long-term labour market exclusion.
Within this project, the 4D Lean Scan will undergo full scientific validation and be further developed through AI-supported predictive analytics, with strict adherence to ethical, legal, and privacy-by-design principles. The AI component will function as a decision-support tool, enhancing risk pattern recognition at group and organisational level, without individual diagnosis or automated decision-making.
By enabling timely, targeted preventive interventions before stress-related conditions become chronic, the project contributes directly to reducing the burden of mental and behavioural NCDs, strengthening sustainable work participation among young people, and alleviating long-term pressure on healthcare and social protection systems in the European Union.