Philip Bohle

University of Tasmania · College of Business and Economics

The expansion of precarious employment in OECD countries has been widely associated with negative health and safety effects. Although many shiftworkers are precariously employed, shiftwork research has concentrated on full-time workers in continuing employment. This paper examines the impact of precarious employment on working hours, work-life conf...

In this review of a range of studies on the health and safety effects of precarious employment in industrialized societies published since 1984, the authors examine the overall findings and methodological issues and identify areas in need of further research. Of the 93 published journal articles and monographs/book chapters reviewed, 76 studies fou...

The practice of outsourcing or subcontracting of work has grown rapidly in most countries over the past two decades. Outsourcing, de-institutionalization, and a range of other practices have also resulted in a growth of home-based work. Home-based workers, even when not part of a subcontracting process, operate in an isolated situation remote from...

The workforces of many countries are aging, creating pressure for older workers to retire later despite greater vulnerability to various occupational safety and health (OSH) risks. Some specific risks to older workers arise from age-related physical or psychological changes, while others reflect exposures to poor work organization or employment con...

Call-centre workers encounter major psychosocial pressures, including high work intensity and undesirable working hours. Little is known, however, about whether these pressures vary with employment status and how they affect work-life conflict and health. Questionnaire data were collected from 179 telephone operators in Sydney, Australia, of whom 1...

Although workplace death is known to have profound social and psychological effects on families, the economic consequences have not been explored. This pioneering study investigated families’ financial situations following fatal workplace injuries. An online survey explored the impact of post-death financial change on 142 participants from Australi...

Background: The petrochemical industry is hazardous, in part because of the inherently dangerous nature of the work conducted, and incidents frequently result in significant financial and social losses. The most common immediate cause of incidents and injuries in this industry is unsafe worker behaviour. Identifying the factors encouraging unsafe...

BACKGROUND Unsafe worker behaviour is often identified as a major cause of dangerous incidents in the petrochemical industry. Behavioural safety models provide frameworks that may help to prevent such incidents by identifying factors promoting safe or unsafe behaviour. A literature review was conducted to identify models of safe behaviour and deter...

Background Unsafe worker behavior is often identified as a major cause of dangerous incidents in the petrochemical industry. Behavioral safety models provide frameworks that may help to prevent such incidents by identifying factors promoting safe or unsafe behavior. We recently conducted a qualitative study to identify factors affecting workers' un...

Background: Unsafe worker behaviour is often identified as a major cause of dangerous incidents in the petrochemical industry. Behavioural safety models provide frameworks that may help to prevent such incidents by identifying factors promoting safe or unsafe behaviour. A literature review was conducted to identify models of safe behaviour and dete...

Background: Unsafe worker behaviour is often identified as a major cause of dangerous incidents in the petrochemical industry. Behavioural safety models provide frameworks that may help to prevent such incidents by identifying factors promoting safe or unsafe behaviour. A literature review was conducted to identify models of safe behaviour and dete...

Background: Unsafe worker behaviour is often identified as a major cause of dangerous incidents in the petrochemical industry. Behavioural safety models provide frameworks that may help to prevent such incidents by identifying factors promoting safe or unsafe behaviour. A literature review was conducted to identify models of safe behaviour and dete...

Background: The petrochemical industry is hazardous, in part because of the inherently dangerous nature of the work conducted, and incidents frequently result in significant financial and social losses. The most common immediate cause of incidents and injuries in this industry is unsafe worker behaviour. Identifying the factors encouraging unsafe w...

Background: The petrochemical industry is hazardous, in part because of the inherently dangerous nature of the work conducted, and incidents frequently result in significant financial and social losses. The most common immediate cause of incidents and injuries in this industry is unsafe worker behaviour. Identifying the factors encouraging unsafe w...

The impact of traumatic workplace death on bereaved families, including their mental health and well-being, has rarely been systematically examined. This study aimed to document the rates and key correlates of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and prolonged grief disorder (PGD) in family members followi...

There has been considerable research and policy debate over the enforcement and decriminalization of occupational health and safety legislation, particularly regarding its capacity to deal with serious harm. Reference has been made to community attitudes to work fatalities, but the perspectives of those most directly affected, the bereaved families...

The sudden and unexpected nature of fatal work incidents can leave family members with a strong need to know how and why the worker died. Forty Australian family members were interviewed to identify the information sought following fatal work incidents and explore the factors enhancing or impairing satisfaction with the account of the death. Findin...

This consensus report summarizes the negative impact of work-related psychosocial factors and job stressors on the health and wellbeing of shift workers. Psychosocial factors may (a) directly affect work schedules or (b) mediate or moderate relationships between work schedules, circadian factors, and health. In this paper, prominent psychosocial mo...

Working time arrangements that require shift work or other non-standard working hours have significant potential to encroach on time that is highly valued for family, social and leisure activity. This can often result in workers experiencing poorer work-family or work-life balance. Based on an extensive literature search and expert knowledge, prima...

Psychosocial risk factors have increased in today’s work environment, and they threaten work ability. Good workplace atmosphere, psychosocial support, the ability to cope with stress, and skills and knowledge are all connected to more successful coping. Faster changes in the work environment and an increased workload can lead to a chain of fatigue...

Fatal work incidents result in an array of government responses, and in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, this may include the holding of coronial inquests. A common theme from the scant literature is that family members have a strong need to know how and why their loved one died. The inquisitorial nature of inquests suggests pote...

Australian government and organizational age-management policies continue to target employment participation among older workers in light of an aging population. Typically, efforts to reduce early retirement among older workers have focused on well-established factors, including the promotion of worker health, reducing injury, supporting caregivers...

Onregelmatige werktijden vormen een extra belasting voor verplegend en verzorgend personeel en zijn onder meer gerelateerd aan burn-out, afnemende motivatie, vermoeidheid, verloop en ziekteverzuim. Eerder onderzoek toonde aan dat vooral het rooster met drieroterende diensten gerelateerd is aan een slechtere gezondheid. De literatuur vermeldt ook vo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between work organisation, bullying and intention to leave (ITL) in the Australian hospitality industry, using pressure, disorganisation and regulatory failure (PDR) to measure work organisation. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 72 workers in A...

The ageing of the Australian workforce has raised concerns about economic sustainability and prompted government polices to encourage longer working lives. However, the effectiveness of these policies is limited by a focus on individual workers rather than the organisations employing them. This chapter examines the strengths of older workers, the s...

This chapter examines the relationships between different forms of ‘flexible work’ (precarious work, flexible working hours), selected work organization variables and work-life conflict. The growth of precarious (insecure, contingent) work has been a major contributor to the expansion of variable and unpredictable working hours, especially in devel...

Background: Shiftwork is a major job demand for nurses and has been related to various negative consequences. Research suggests that personal and job resources moderate the impact of work schedules on stress, health and well-being. Objectives: This longitudinal study examined whether the interactions of personal and job resources with work sched...

This book explores the effects of shift work and non standard working hours on family and social life. It features analysis and case studies from an international body of researchers from Europe, the Americas and Australia. It includes contributions from Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Australia, and Brazil, tha...

Work remains a significant source of illness, injury, and death in developed countries. In Australia, for example, over 2,000 people die from work-related causes each year, with heavy social, economic, and personal costs (Safe Work Australia, 2013a ). Most die as a result of work-related disease. However, many die from trauma. In 2012, 223 workers...

Objective: The Work Ability Index (WAI), the dominant measure of work ability, provides little information for targeting workplace interventions. There are benefits of developing new measures that focus on self-rated capacity to meet job demands rather than on health subscales of the WAI. Methods: Structural equation modeling with cross-sectiona...

Little is known about how employers and trade unions deal with work-related death, even in higher-risk industries. This study examines union and employer responses to work-related death. Drawing on interviews conducted with 48 representatives from the key organisations involved in workplace death in Australia, the aim was not only to determine how...

Work organisation has well-established associations with health. This study compares the associations of Pressure, Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure (PDR) and effort-reward imbalance (ERI) with health and well-being among older workers. Participants were 714 Australian workers aged 45-65 (56.3% female), with a mean age of 54.6 years (SD = 5.0)...

A growing body of research has examined the effects of job insecurity or different forms of precarious work, such as temporary employment, on occupational health and safety (OHS). A number of reasons have been proposed to explain the more mixed results with regard to studies of temporary employment, including the diversity of these work arrangement...

Shifts in demographics, lifestyles and employment and business practices are generating increased demand for homecare services. While providing support to vulnerable members of the community, homecare workers are themselves vulnerable. Precarious work and isolated workplaces expose them to poorly controlled occupational health and safety (OHS) haza...

Every year, there are over 200 traumatic deaths at work in Australia. A government safety inspector usually investigates each incident. The investigation may lead to prosecution of the employer or another party deemed to have breached relevant legislation. However, little systematic research has examined the needs and interests of grieving families...

This article examines the impact of disability and related variables (age, gender, and education level) on job search behaviours and employment outcomes. Data are from a two-wave study of 681 Australians between the ages of 45 and 65 who were not in paid employment. Regression modelling indicates that disability impedes job search at several stages...

ABSTRACT This study explored influences on the housing choices of retirees. Sixteen convergent interviewing processes were conducted in inner urban, suburban, coastal and rural locations in South Australia and New South Wales, Australia. In each location, separate interview processes were conducted with retirement village residents and retirees liv...

Extensive change is evident in higher education in the People's Republic of China but there have been few studies of the effect of work stress on wellbeing in the higher education sector. The main aim of this study is to test and refine the ASSET (‘An Organizational Stress Screening Tool’) model of occupational stress in a sample of 150 academic an...

For over two decades, Industrial Relations (IR) has been under challenge both as an academic field (especially in terms of teaching) and as a term to describe work-related policies. This challenge has coincided with a decline in collective regulation of working conditions, associated efforts to re-orientate both academic and policy discourse, and s...

This article reviews published research on the effects of disability, age and gender on the job search process. Electronic databases (Medline [via Ovid], OT Seeker, CINAHL, AMED, and Proquest 5000) were used to identify studies focusing on job search and employment, disability, age, gender and other barriers to workforce participation. There has be...

Research and policy on occupational health and safety have understandably focused on workers as the direct victims of workplace hazards. However, serious illness, injury, or death at work also has cascading psychological, social, and economic effects on victims' families and close friends. These effects have been neglected by researchers and policy...

Over 5 thousand family members and close friends of Australian workers become survivors of sudden workplace death each year. Formal responses following the death are central to surviving families' ability to adapt, yet families' experiences of these responses are unknown. This study used in-depth interviews to explore 7 surviving family members' ex...

This Australian exploratory study investigates the financial considerations retirees experienced before moving into a retirement village. A qualitative content analysis was undertaken on the responses of 52 retirement village residents, who were part of a much larger study on retirees’ accommodation choices in 2007. The respondents were grouped acc...

Older workers are less physically active and have a higher rate and cost of injury than younger workers and so have reduced work-ability. Concurrently, sedentary behaviour in the workplace, in transport and in the home is increasing and has harmful health effects. Walking is a familiar, convenient, and free form of health-enhancing physical activit...

Precarious or temporary work is associated with adverse outcomes including low control over working hours, work-life conflict and stress. The rise in precarious employment is most marked in the service sector but little research has been done on its health effects in this sector. This study compares permanent and temporary workers in the hotel indu...

In Australia, as in most other industrialized economies, there is growing concern about the work capacity of older workers and their retention in the workforce against a background of population aging and efforts to prolong working lives. It is widely recognized that working later will be promoted by equipping industry and workers with instruments...

A research report for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union presenting pilot research on families bereaved by work fatalities in the Australian construction industry.

Progressive resistance training (PRT) counteracts sarcopenia and has been demonstrated to improve physical function and quality of life in older adults. Despite the clear benefits of PRT, participation remains low. The core self-evaluation (CSE) construct is theoretically antecedent to four personality traits: locus of control, self-esteem, neuroti...

There is now a substantial body of international research indicating that job insecurity and contingent work arrangements (such as temporary or agency work and multi-tiered subcontracting) is associated with significant adverse effects on the health, safety and wellbeing of workers including work-life balance (Quinlan et al, 2001). While some studi...

The Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) is a widely used measure of behavioral temporal preference, and it is highly reliable across cultures. There are several competing models concerning its factor structure. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to replicate the two-and three-factor models, and, in addition, we examined the utility of the...

This paper looks at the role and influence of contingent employment among short-haul truckers, an occupational group that has been little studied to date. A 2003 survey of Australian short-haul drivers examined the predictors of health and safety outcomes for all drivers and provided comparative information on the working hours, occupational safety...

Over the past two decades, a leading business practice has been often-repeated rounds of downsizing and restructuring (also referred to as reorganization, re-engineering, and a host of other euphemistic terms) by large private and public sector employers. Frequently associated with other practices such as outsourcing, privatization, and the increas...

A research report prepared for the for the South Australian Office of the Employee Ombudsman pesenting pilot research on the occupational health and safety of South Australian homecare workers.

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This study examined organizational factors affecting the impact of shiftwork on work life conflict and subjective health. A model was proposed in which support from supervisors, support from colleagues, and team identity influence time-based work life conflict through two mediating variables: team climate and control over the working environment. R...

This special issue of Chronobiology International presents a selection of papers originally delivered at the 18th International Symposium on Shift Work and Working Time, held at Yeppoon, Australia, in August 2007. The key theme of the symposium was “Aging and Working Time: Creating Safe Environments.” Older workers are widely believed to experience...

To test the feasibility and efficacy of current guidelines for multimodal exercise programs in older adults. Randomized, controlled trial. Retirement village. Thirty-eight subjects (14 men and 24 women) aged 76.6 +/- 6.1. A wait list control or 10 weeks of supervised exercise consisting of high-intensity (80% of one-repetition maximum (1RM)) progre...

The present study contributes to theory and practice through the development of a model of shift-work tolerance with the potential to indicate interventions that reduce nurses' intention toward turnover and increase job satisfaction in hospital-based settings. Survey data from 1257 nurses were used to conduct structural equation modeling that exami...

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Morningness scales have been translated into several languages, but a lack of normative data and methodological differences make cross-cultural comparisons difficult. This study examines the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) in samples from five countries: France (n = 627), Italy (n = 702), Spa...

Extensive organisational downsizing and restructuring has occurred in many countries since the 1980s. The negative consequences for workers forced into unemployment are well recognised. However, a growing body of evidence suggests there are also substantial, though less obvious, negative effects on workers who are retained. These effects may includ...

Shiftwork is a major source of stress for many workers. This study highlights the role that organizational and psychosocial variables play in alleviating the negative health effects of 10- and 14-h shifts. It examines the direct and mediated effects of coping strategies, social support and control of shifts on work/non-work conflict and subjective...

Using a student sample (n=692) and an organization sample (n=180), we scrutinized two morning–evening orientation scales using item response theory (IRT) methods. We used IRT to compare the measurement precision of the Composite Scale (CS) and the Early/Late Preferences Scale (PS). The CS had slightly higher measurement precision at all ranges of o...

This paper defines job sharing and explores its potential benefits. An overview of its origins and growth in Australia and overseas is followed by discussion of management issues. Organisational issues concern aspects of planning, implementation and operation. Issues for job sharers include finding an appropriate job share partner, maintenance of t...