Occupational Health Science最新文献

Unlike precarious employment which is temporary and insecure, with inadequate pay, benefits, and legal protections, precarious work schedules can affect workers with permanent full-time jobs in sectors where employment has historically been secure, well-compensated, and even unionized. Precarious work schedules - characterized by long shifts, non-daytime hours, intensity and unsocial work hours - are increasingly prevalent. Relations between precarious work schedules and poor health are not well understood, and less is known about how to attenuate this relation. We examined the indirect effects of precarious work schedules on fatigue and depressive symptoms through sleep quantity. Two moderators - schedule flexibility and sleep quality - were examined as buffers of these associations. Workers from the Departments of Correction and Transportation in a northeast state (N = 222) took surveys and reported on demographics, work schedule characteristics, schedule flexibility, sleep quality and quantity, fatigue, and depressive symptoms. Results revealed that precarious work schedules had indirect effects on fatigue and depressive symptoms through sleep quantity. Schedule flexibility moderated the relation between precarious work schedules and sleep quantity, such that workers with greater schedule flexibility had more hours of sleep. Sleep quality moderated the association between sleep quantity and fatigue and depressive symptoms, such that workers reported greater fatigue and depressive symptoms when they had poorer sleep quality. Findings have direct applicability for developing initiatives that enhance Total Worker Health® through individual and organizational changes.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41542-022-00114-y.

Given the rapid growth of intervention research in the occupational health sciences and related fields (e.g. work-family), we propose that occupational health scientists adopt an "alpha, beta, gamma" change approach when evaluating intervention efficacy. Interventions can affect absolute change in constructs directly (alpha change), changes in the scales used to assess change (beta change) or redefinitions of the construct itself (gamma change). Researchers should consider the extent to which they expect their intervention to affect each type of change and select evaluation approaches accordingly. We illustrate this approach using change data from groups of IT professionals and health care workers participating in the STAR intervention, designed by the Work Family Health Network. STAR was created to effect change in employee work-family conflict via supervisor family-supportive behaviors and schedule control. We hypothesize that it will affect change via all three change approaches-gamma, beta, and alpha. Using assessment techniques from measurement equivalence approaches, we find results consistent with some gamma and beta change in the IT company due to the intervention; our results suggest that not accounting for such change could affect the evaluation of alpha change. We demonstrate that using a tripartite model of change can help researchers more clearly specify intervention change targets and processes. This will enable the assessment of change in a way that has stronger fidelity between the theories used and the outcomes of interest. Our research has implications for how to assess change using a broader change framework, which employs measurement equivalence approaches in order to advance the design and deployment of more effective interventions in occupational settings.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41542-022-00122-y.

Economic crises, such as the one induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting widespread corporate cost-cutting, drastically alter the nature of work. Job insecurity represents a critical intermediate between the economic ramifications of an economic crisis and work and stress outcomes, however, the underlying cognitive consequences of job insecurity and how to buffer those effects are not well understood. We examine how corporate cost-cutting announcements indirectly relate to employees' attention through their relationship with employee job insecurity and investigate supervisor support as a potential buffer of these relationships. We used multi-source data to test our research model, combining data on cost-cutting announcements (budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs) in news articles for 165 organizations with survey data from 421 full-time employees from these organizations between March 26, 2020 and April 8, 2020. Cost-cutting announcements are positively related to job insecurity, which is related to employee's attention with supervisor support mitigating the effects of job insecurity on attention. Grounded in self-regulation theories, we contribute to and extend the theoretical understanding of the organizational context for job insecurity and cognitive outcomes. We discuss the implications for organizations to manage and prepare for future economic crises, specifically on organizational communication and supervisor interventions.

Service workers often endure sexual harassment from customers in the course of performing their work duties. This article includes two studies based upon psychological contract theory. Customer sexual harassment (CSH) is posited as a psychological contract breach, which predicts an affective response (i.e., psychological contract violation), and in turn, work and health-related outcomes. Both studies tested models using samples of customer service women from various professions. Using path analysis, Study 1 found support for the proposed model, finding significant indirect effects between CSH and emotional exhaustion and affective commitment via psychological contract violation. Study 2 expanded upon the results, finding additional evidence of mediation for burnout (emotional exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy), affective commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. This study adds to growing research highlighting the health and work-related costs of allowing CSH to persist. Results support the application of theory and raise concerns that organizations may be viewed as complicit in CSH, which in turn, is linked with health and job-related outcomes. Examining contract violation, a subjective appraisal of the organization, serves as a contribution to sexual harassment literature, which has focused on appraisal of the harassment itself and has not directly followed from theory. Future research could examine specifics regarding how harassment experiences might impact organizational perceptions via psychological contract theory. Drawing upon CSH and psychological contract literatures, approaches to prevention and intervention are discussed.

Seafaring shares many characteristics with contemporary working life ashore. However, a major difference is that seafarers can spend up to 12 months aboard a ship that constitutes a work, living and recreational environment. Onboard work includes many stressors that can potentially contribute to workplace bullying and harassment, which in turn can affect safety critical operations. The aim of this study was to identify underlying causes in the organizational and social work environment that can cause workplace bullying and harassment at sea, and to suggest appropriate preventive and promotive strategies and measures. Data were collected mainly through World Café workshops with 56 participants from the Swedish maritime industry. Seafarer occupational health, safety, and wellbeing is largely determined by interdependent factors at micro, meso, and macro levels, where different stakeholders play various roles. Strategies and measures starting at the individual seafarer, and gradually expanding outwards toward the maritime industry are suggested. It is important that a victim of bullying or harassment receives adequate support. Creating crew courage enables employees to both recognize troubling situations and know how to act and respond to a situation. To bridge the gap between policy and practice, the legislative framework needs translating into practical procedures to make sense to the middle manager at the sharp end, with limited knowledge, time, resources, and decision latitude. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of work environment interventions - what works, for whom, and under which circumstances.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to work from home (WFH) and more heavily rely on technology to conduct work, calling for further empirical investigation into the effects of work-related technology and the WFH environment on employee wellbeing. This study investigates the relationship between work-related email (WRE) use during nonwork hours and emotional exhaustion in a sample of U.S. employees required to WFH during the pandemic, with results suggesting that psychological detachment and work-family conflict (WFC) play important roles in this relationship. Furthermore, telepressure (i.e., the preoccupation/urge to promptly respond to WRE) moderated the relationship between WRE use and psychological detachment, which offers insight into the psychological processes behind WRE use after hours. Direct and indirect effects between WRE use and emotional exhaustion were also compared to effects generated using data from an independent sample of pre-pandemic in-office employees to determine whether the pandemic context has amplified the observed relationships. Results show that all direct/indirect effects, except for the effect of WRE use after hours on psychological detachment, were stronger in those required to WFH. These findings shed light onto the similarities and differences between the current and pre-pandemic work landscapes and have important implications for lawmakers, organizational leaders, and employees.

Communication technology enables employees to be constantly connected at the cost of potentially blurring the boundaries between work and private life, which can be detrimental to their well-being. The present study utilised a quantitative diary approach (N = 269 employees, N = 1256 data points) to provide further evidence on the association between telepressure and ruminative thoughts within boundary-crossing contexts (i.e., including work-related behaviour and cognitions during leisure time as well as private-related behaviour and cognitions at work). On a day-to-day level, we examined if context-incongruent telepressure had a positive effect on context-incongruent affective rumination through context-incongruent message-based communication behaviour. Multilevel analyses supported our hypothesised mediation models. Altogether, findings reveal that quickly replying towards messages or its related cognition (i.e., telepressure) may result in a resource-draining experience in terms of affective rumination within both boundary-crossing contexts. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are discussed.

This qualitative research contributes to the telework research literature by identifying and categorizing employee motives for teleworking. Motives for telework contextualize teleworking behavior, represent proximal telework outcomes, and serve as potential boundary conditions for telework-outcome relationships. Role identity theory (Burke & Tully Social Forces, 55(4), 881-897, 1977) and the uncertainty-reduction hypothesis (Hogg & Terry Academy of Management Review, 25, 121-140, 2000) suggest that motives may be driven by role salience and the ability to meet work and nonwork demands. In this research, we sought to identify a comprehensive list of motives as well as reconcile the wide range of categories and labels given to telework motives in the literature. We asked two independent samples of workers comprised of two subsamples of teleworkers (n ₁ = 195; n ₂ = 97) and a subsample of nonteleworkers (n ₃ = 947) why they telework or would like to telework. A total of 2504 reasons were gathered across the three subsamples. Most respondents reported multiple reasons, especially when encouraged to list all of their reasons. After distinguishing preconditions from motives to telework, ten categories emerged from the qualitative data with "avoid commute" emerging as the most frequently reported motive. Other frequently reported motives included "tend to family demands" and "productivity." Additional motives are discussed along with implications for telework research and policy development and implementation.