Effect of psychosocial safety climate on psychological distress via job resources, work engagement and workaholism: a multilevel longitudinal study

Preventing workplace mistreatment and improving workers' mental health: a scoping review of the impact of psychosocial safety climate

BACKGROUND

Work environment is rapidly evolving, unfortunately, it is also becoming increasingly hostile for workers due mostly to common psychosocial hazards. This situation is posing significant challenges for organisations to protect the psychological well-being of their workers. Hence, this review aims to map studies to understand the influence of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) on workplace mistreatment and mental health of workers.

METHODS

The guidelines outlined by Arksey and O'Malley were adopted for this review. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, Google and Google Scholar were searched for relevant papers. Only peer-reviewed studies that measured PSC using PSC-12, PSC-8 or PSC-4 were included in this review.

RESULTS

Thirty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria. This review found that PSC has a negative association with workplace mistreatment such as bullying, harassment, violence, discrimination and abuse. Further, PSC has a positive association with psychological well-being, personal resilience and hope. Low level organisational PSC also promotes psychological distress, stress, depression, cognitive weariness and emotional exhaustion. The buffering effect of PSC is well-established. Moreover, PSC mediates the association between health-centric leadership and workers' psychological health problems. The inverse relationship between PSC and depressive symptoms was stronger for females than males.

CONCLUSION

Organisations should prioritise training and development of supervisors to enhance their supportive skills, encourage respectful behaviour, encourage the use of resources promote open and bottom-up communication and provide guidance on conflict resolution. By promoting a high PSC context, organisations can create a culture that discourages mistreatment, leading to increased employee well-being, job satisfaction, and productivity.

Psychosocial factors, psychological well-being and safety incidents among long-distance bus drivers in Ghana: A cross-sectional survey

BACKGROUND

Commercial bus drivers account for most road traffic crashes and related mortality. The psychosocial working conditions of these drivers have been found precarious. However, road safety initiatives in Ghana still focus on correcting risky driving behaviours, ignoring the conditions under which these drivers operate. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine whether psychosocial work factors can predict the psychological well-being and risky driving behaviours of long-distance bus drivers in Ghana.

METHODS

This quantitative cross-sectional survey recruited 7315 long-distance bus drivers that operate from Accra to other parts of Ghana and cities in other West African countries. Hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).

RESULTS

We found that job demands and job resources are direct and significant predictors of psychological well-being and safety incidents among these drivers. Moreover, psychological well-being of the drivers had a significant inverse relationship with their safety incidents. Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) had a negative association with safety incidents, and a positive but non-significant association with psychological well-being. PSC had a negative and significant association with job resources contrary to the notion of the PSC theory.

CONCLUSION

Psychosocial work factors are predictors of psychological well-being and safety incidents of long-distance bus drivers. Owners and managers of bus transport businesses in Ghana, driver unions and station masters need to highly prioritise psychological health and safety of this bus drivers by providing suitable job resources and adopting bottom-up communication that might help the drivers effectively cope with their job demands.

Behavioral sciences applied to acute care teams: a research agenda for the years ahead by a European research network

BACKGROUND

Multi-disciplinary behavioral research on acute care teams has focused on understanding how teams work and on identifying behaviors characteristic of efficient and effective team performance. We aimed to define important knowledge gaps and establish a research agenda for the years ahead of prioritized research questions in this field of applied health research.

METHODS

In the first step, high-priority research questions were generated by a small highly specialized group of 29 experts in the field, recruited from the multinational and multidisciplinary "Behavioral Sciences applied to Acute care teams and Surgery (BSAS)" research network - a cross-European, interdisciplinary network of researchers from social sciences as well as from the medical field committed to understanding the role of behavioral sciences in the context of acute care teams. A consolidated list of 59 research questions was established. In the second step, 19 experts attending the 2020 BSAS annual conference quantitatively rated the importance of each research question based on four criteria - usefulness, answerability, effectiveness, and translation into practice. In the third step, during half a day of the BSAS conference, the same group of 19 experts discussed the prioritization of the research questions in three online focus group meetings and established recommendations.

RESULTS

Research priorities identified were categorized into six topics: (1) interventions to improve team process; (2) dealing with and implementing new technologies; (3) understanding and measuring team processes; (4) organizational aspects impacting teamwork; (5) training and health professions education; and (6) organizational and patient safety culture in the healthcare domain. Experts rated the first three topics as particularly relevant in terms of research priorities; the focus groups identified specific research needs within each topic.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on research priorities within the BSAS community and the broader field of applied health sciences identified through this work, we advocate for the prioritization for funding in these areas.

Influence of psychosocial safety climate on occupational health and safety: a scoping review

BACKGROUND

Creating a healthy, decent and safe workplace and designing quality jobs are ways to eliminate precarious work in organisations and industries. This review aimed at mapping evidence on how psychosocial safety climate (PSC) influence health, safety and performance of workers.

METHODS

A literature search was conducted in four main databases (PubMed, Scopus, Central and Web of Science) and other online sources like Google Scholar. A reference list of eligible studies was also checked for additional papers. Only full-text peer-reviewed papers published in English were eligible for this review.

RESULTS

A search in the databases produced 13,711 records, and through a rigorous screening process, 93 papers were included in this review. PSC is found to directly affect job demands, job insecurity, effort-reward imbalance, work-family conflict, job resources, job control and quality leadership. Moreover, PSC directly affects social relations at work, including workplace abuse, violence, discrimination and harassment. Again, PSC has a direct effect on health, safety and performance outcomes because it moderates the impact of excessive job demands on workers' health and safety. Finally, PSC boosts job resources' effect on improving workers' well-being, safety and performance.

CONCLUSION

Managers' efforts directed towards designing quality jobs, prioritising the well-being of workers, and fostering a bottom-up communication through robust organisational policies, practices, and procedures may help create a high organisational PSC that, in turn, promotes a healthy and decent work environment.

Motivational background of work addiction: the role of perceived demanding organizational conditions

Purpose

In the literature, work addiction is proposed to be considered a construct that requires an extensive approach for understanding it; consequently, it should be analyzed as the interaction between personal and situational factors. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the mediating role work motivation plays in the relationship between perceived demanding organizational conditions and employee work addiction.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional study was conducted on a convenience sample of 669 workers from different organizations in Lithuania. Data were collected using online self-administered questionnaire. To test a mediation model, a structural equation modeling path analysis was performed.

Findings

Demanding organizational conditions (i.e. work addiction of a manager, the workload, a work role conflict, a competitive organizational climate and the family-unsupportive organizational environment) were related to increased work addiction through higher extrinsic motivation. The mediator of intrinsic motivation yielded different results: the indirect relationship between demanding organizational conditions and work addiction was significant only at lower levels of intrinsic motivation. Even having controlled work motivation as a mediator, the proposed direct links remained significant in most cases.

Originality/value

The study gives a profound understanding of work addiction and explains the mechanism activated by an organization that is of great importance for its development and maintenance.

Perceived psychosocial safety climate, psychological distress, and work engagement in Japanese employees: A cross-sectional mediation analysis of job demands and job resources

OBJECTIVES

We examined the associations of perceived psychosocial safety climate (PSC) with psychological distress and work engagement in Japanese employees. We also examined the mediation effects of job demands (i.e., psychological demands) and job resources (i.e., job control, worksite support, and extrinsic reward) in these associations.

METHODS

A total of 2200 employees (1100 men and 1100 women) registered with a Japanese online survey company were surveyed using a self-administered web-based questionnaire containing the scales on PSC (12-item PSC scale), job demands and job resources (Job Content Questionnaire and Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire), psychological distress (K6 scale), and work engagement (9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale), and items on demographic and occupational characteristics (i.e., age, sex, education, occupation, work form, and working hours per week). A multiple mediation analysis with a bootstrap method was conducted.

RESULTS

After adjusting for demographic and occupational characteristics, significant negative and positive total effects of perceived PSC were observed on psychological distress and work engagement, respectively (c = -0.258 [95% confidence interval (CI): -0.298 to -0.219] and 0.383 [95% CI: 0.344-0.421], respectively). When we included job demands and job resources as mediators in the model, significant total mediation effects in these associations were observed (c - c' = -0.181 [95% CI: -0.221 to -0.143] and 0.269 [95% CI: 0.234-0.304], respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that perceived PSC is negatively associated with psychological distress and positively associated with work engagement, and that these associations are partially mediated (or explained) by job demands and job resources.

Psychological distress and post-traumatic growth in France during the COVID-19 pandemic: A mediation model of psychosocial safety climate as a determinant of work performance

The psychosocial safety climate (PSC) reflects workers’ perceptions of senior management’s concern for mental health. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated organizational issues, PSC could be a target for interventions attempting to preserve both the psychological health of employees and the economic health of companies. This study examines the direct and indirect relationships between PSC and work performance through two indicators of psychological health, psychological distress and post-traumatic growth, during a health crisis, i.e., prior to the second confinement in France. To this end, 2,004 participants from the French workforce completed a survey in October 2020. The results of mediation analyses indicate that PSC has a direct and positive influence on post-traumatic growth (PTG) and performance, as well as a direct negative influence on psychological distress. PSC also has an indirect positive influence on performance via psychological distress. Organizations that wish to jointly address mental health and performance at work would benefit from optimizing PSC.

The Effect of Psychosocial Safety Climate on Engagement and Psychological Distress: A Multilevel Study on the Healthcare Sector

All work sectors have been affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The perception of risk combined with the lack of safety and fear for their own safety have caused severe psychological discomfort in workers. Of all the work sectors, the most affected was certainly the healthcare sector. In hospitals, medical staff were at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19, providing care in close physical proximity to patients and had a direct risk of being exposed to the virus. The main objective of the study was to investigate the perception of a psychosocial safety climate and the effect on engagement and psychological stress in a sample of 606 healthcare workers (physicians 39.6%, nurses 41.3%, healthcare assistant 19.1%), belonging to six organisations and organised into 11 working groups. Furthermore, we wanted to investigate the mediating effect of workaholism at both individual and group level. The results partially confirmed our hypotheses and the mediating effect at the individual level of working compulsively. A psychosocial safety climate in healthcare workers led to a decrease in engagement through the mediation of working compulsively. The mediating effect of working compulsively might be due to a climate that did not guarantee or preserve the psychological health and safety of healthcare workers. In this research, the most important limit concerns the number of organisations and the number of groups.

The interplay between servant leadership, psychological safety, trust in a leader and burnout: assessing causal relationships through a three-wave longitudinal study

COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented psychological challenges for frontline healthcare workers, especially nurses, causing anxiety and depression leading to burnout. The responsibility of healthcare leaders has increased manyfold to deal with such challenges. This study attempts to employ the conservation of resources theory to examine the relationship between servant leadership and nurses' burnout, with the mediating role of psychological safety and the moderating effect of trust in leader. A three-wave longitudinal design was employed for data collection from 1204 nurses from 27 hospitals in China. The partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used for data analyses with SmartPLS version 3.2.8. The findings endorse that servant leadership at time 1 significantly reduces nurses' burnout measured at time 3 through the mediating role of psychological safety measured at time 2, and that a higher level of trust in the leader enhances the impact of servant leadership in reducing nurses' burnout.

Construction of a Model of Nurse Engagement in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Moderated-Mediation Model

Aim

The aim of the study is to test a moderated mediation model that focuses on job resources mediating the relationship between organizational climate and nurse engagement in the long-term care facilities and emotional intelligence moderates this mediated relationship.

Background

The shortage of nurses is a global problem, especially in the long-term care facilities. We integrated and extended past research exploring the influence of nurse engagement and constructed a model of nurse engagement in the long-term care facilities.

Method

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 494 nurses in long-term care facilities. Nurses were asked to complete a survey of nurse engagement, organizational climate, job resources, and emotional intelligence.

Results

The consequence demonstrated that organizational climate increased nurse engagement directly and indirectly via job resources. In addition, emotional intelligence plays a moderation role between organizational climate and job resources.

Conclusion

These phenomena revealed that a good organizational climate and job resources enable nurses to be more engaged in work. Nurse with high-emotional intelligence can take advantage of resources and improve their engagement.

Imperfectly perfect: Examining psychosocial safety climate's influence on the physical and psychological impact of perfectionism in the practice of law

Existing evidence suggests that perfectionism is related to depressive symptoms, burnout, and clinical disorders and that socially prescribed, rather than self-oriented, perfectionism is the most maladaptive. Thus, social expectations of perfection can have detrimental effects on workers that may result in negative organizational outcomes. Using a sample of 176 Arizona attorneys, this two-wave longitudinal study examined whether psychosocial safety climate (PSC) may reduce perfectionist ideals and, in turn, improve employee well-being. Expectedly, PSC negatively influenced physical and psychological distress 2 months later directly and indirectly via socially prescribed perfectionism, suggesting that the beneficial impacts of positive PSCs may manifest over a relatively short period of time. Contrarily, self-oriented perfectionism was not related to PSC, suggesting a demand-resource mismatch, and positively related to physical symptoms only. These results suggest a more complex relationship between self-oriented perfectionism and employee well-being, perhaps depending on other variables.

Teachers' teleworking job satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe

This research takes insights from the job demand resource model to examine the teleworking job satisfaction of teachers for the period of COVID-19 pandemic. This study evidenced that teachers’ satisfaction with teleworking has been reduced as a consequence of the job demand increase. In contrast, access to adequate resources has allowed them to confront the challenges of teleworking, thus increasing their job satisfaction. The adverse effect of job demands on teleworking job satisfaction is buffered by job resources as teachers’ required extra means to confront unexpected and increased job demands. The technological gap between younger and older teachers was uncovered.

The relationship between work engagement and workaholism: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between two sub-constructs of heavy work investment: work engagement and workaholism.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize and critically assess existing research on the relationship between these concepts.

Findings

The review revealed three major shortcomings of the extant literature: a dichotomous perspective, variations in measurements and the unaddressed complexity of the relationship.

Originality/value

Based on these findings, this study provides a discussion on the limitations and suggestions for future research on work engagement and workaholism, including using a person-centered approach.