{"title":"The case for change: aviation worker wellbeing during the COVID 19 pandemic, and the need for an integrated health and safety culture.","authors":"Joan Cahill, Paul Cullen, Keith Gaynor","doi":"10.1007/s10111-022-00711-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The workplace is an important setting for health protection, health promotion and disease prevention. Currently, health and wellbeing approaches at an aviation organisational level are not addressing both human and safety needs. This issue has been intensified since the COVID 19 pandemic. This paper reports on the findings of a survey pertaining to aviation worker wellbeing and organisational approaches to managing wellbeing and mental health. The survey was administered at two different time periods during the COVID 19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). Collectively, feedback was obtained from over 3000 aviation workers. Survey feedback indicates that aviation workers are experiencing considerable challenges in relation to their health and wellbeing. These challenges are not being adequately addressed at an organisational level, which creates risk both from an individual and flight safety perspective. The descriptive findings of both surveys along with a regression analysis is used to make a principled case for augmenting the existing approach to managing aviation worker wellbeing (including mental health), at both an organisational and regulatory level. It is argued that aviation organisations, with the support of the regulator should implement a preventative, ethical and evidence-based strategy to managing wellbeing and mental health risk. Critically, aviation organisations need to advance and integrated health, wellbeing, and safety culture. This necessitates an alignment of human, business, and safety objectives, as articulated in concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and responsible work. Critically, this approach depends on trust and the specification of appropriate protections, so that aviation workers feel safe to routinely report wellbeing levels and challenges, and their impact on operational safety.</p>","PeriodicalId":49090,"journal":{"name":"Cognition Technology & Work","volume":"25 1","pages":"75-117"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9382631/pdf/","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cognition Technology & Work","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-022-00711-5","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, INDUSTRIAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The workplace is an important setting for health protection, health promotion and disease prevention. Currently, health and wellbeing approaches at an aviation organisational level are not addressing both human and safety needs. This issue has been intensified since the COVID 19 pandemic. This paper reports on the findings of a survey pertaining to aviation worker wellbeing and organisational approaches to managing wellbeing and mental health. The survey was administered at two different time periods during the COVID 19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). Collectively, feedback was obtained from over 3000 aviation workers. Survey feedback indicates that aviation workers are experiencing considerable challenges in relation to their health and wellbeing. These challenges are not being adequately addressed at an organisational level, which creates risk both from an individual and flight safety perspective. The descriptive findings of both surveys along with a regression analysis is used to make a principled case for augmenting the existing approach to managing aviation worker wellbeing (including mental health), at both an organisational and regulatory level. It is argued that aviation organisations, with the support of the regulator should implement a preventative, ethical and evidence-based strategy to managing wellbeing and mental health risk. Critically, aviation organisations need to advance and integrated health, wellbeing, and safety culture. This necessitates an alignment of human, business, and safety objectives, as articulated in concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and responsible work. Critically, this approach depends on trust and the specification of appropriate protections, so that aviation workers feel safe to routinely report wellbeing levels and challenges, and their impact on operational safety.
期刊介绍:
Cognition, Technology & Work focuses on the practical issues of human interaction with technology within the context of work and, in particular, how human cognition affects, and is affected by, work and working conditions.
The aim is to publish research that normally resides on the borderline between people, technology, and organisations. Including how people use information technology, how experience and expertise develop through work, and how incidents and accidents are due to the interaction between individual, technical and organisational factors.
The target is thus the study of people at work from a cognitive systems engineering and socio-technical systems perspective.
The most relevant working contexts of interest to CTW are those where the impact of modern technologies on people at work is particularly important for the users involved as well as for the effects on the environment and plants. Modern society has come to depend on the safe and efficient functioning of a multitude of technological systems as diverse as industrial production, transportation, communication, supply of energy, information and materials, health and finance.