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Mental Health and Productivity at Work: Does What You Do Matter?
Abstract
Much of the economic cost of mental illness stems from workers’ reduced productivity. Using nationally representative panel data we analyze the links between mental health and two alternative workplace productivity measures – absenteeism and presenteeism (i.e., lower productivity while attending work) – explicitly allowing these relationships to be moderated by the nature of the job itself. We find that absence rates are approximately five percent higher among workers who report being in poor mental health. Moreover, job conditions are related to both presenteeism and absenteeism even after accounting for workers’ self-reported mental health status. Job conditions are relatively more important in understanding diminished productivity at work if workers are in good rather than poor mental health. The effects of job complexity and stress on absenteeism do not depend on workers’ mental health, while job security and control moderate the effect of mental illness on absence days.
... The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected perceptions of mental health due to the threat of infection (Xiang et al., 2020), reduced social life (Brooks et al., 2020;Killgore et al., 2020;Xiang et al., 2020), increased perception of job insecurity, and financial losses (Brooks et al., 2020). Individuals with low mental health perceptions have reduced life satisfaction (Headey et al., 1993;Karatepe et al., 2021), work performance (Karatepe et al., 2021;Van Gordon et al., 2014), job satisfaction (Nadinloyi et al., 2013), efficiency (Bubonya et al., 2017), and organizational commitment (Heidarie et al., 2012). During the COVID-19 pandemic, employee resilience and mental health can be strengthened by providing health insurance for hotel employees, changing working hours, and encouraging remote work (Alves et al., 2020). ...
... Drawing on the Broaden-and-Build Theory, we argue that difficulties and experiences affect emotionally positive thinking over time while hotel employees' mental health will also have a positive effect (Fredrickson, 2001;Fredrickson, 2004). Hotel employees with positive mental health perceptions exhibit greater life satisfaction (Headey et al., 1993), work performance (Van Gordon et al., 2014), job satisfaction (Nadinloyi et al., 2013), efficiency (Bubonya et al., 2017), and organizational commitment (Heidarie et al., 2012). Our findings show that psychological and employee resilience can evaluate within the scope of individual resilience while resilience improves hotel employees' mental health. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many fundamental changes. Especially in the tourism sector, where people are in constant communication and interaction, negative effects have been seen excessively. This situation also affected tourism employees economically, psychologically and physically. Therefore, paper is aimed to reveal the relationship among resilience, perceived vulnerability and mental health perceptions within the scope of hotel employees. This study examines the effects of psychological and employee resilience on hotel employees’ mental health perceptions. In this context, “psychological resilience has a signifant positive influence on hotel employees’ mental health perceptions” and “employee resilience has a significant positive influence on hotel employees’ mental health perceptions” have been developed. The study also examines the mediating the role of perceived vulnerability in the effect of individual-level resilience on hotel employees’ mental health perceptions. In this context, “perceived vulnerability mediates the effect of individual-level resilience on mental health perceptions” has been developed. In total, 391 questionnaire forms were analyzed using a structural equations model to test the hypotheses. The results show that hotel employees’ psychological and employee resilience make their mental health perceptions more positive. Perceived vulnerability partially mediates the effect of individual-level resilience on mental health perceptions.
... Taken together, our results imply that it may be beneficial for companies to allow WfH for those with suitable occupations. While employers may not be awarded with a significant reduction in costly sick days, they may obtain (mentally) healthier workers, which according to the literature (e.g., Bubonya et al. [51]) might in turn have other beneficial implications on commitment, engagement, and productivity. It is also worth noting that WfH is usually not something that is (forcefully) applied to employees. ...
Using a novel German linked employer–employee dataset, we provide unique evidence about the consequences of working from home (WfH) on individual health and well-being. During the recent pandemic, this locational flexibility measure has been used extensively to promote health by hampering the spread of the virus and to secure jobs. However, its direct theoretical ambiguous effects on health and well-being as characterized by different potential channels have barely been empirically investigated to date despite WfH’s increasing popularity in the years before the pandemic. To address concerns about selection into WfH in our dataset that is unaffected by the COVID-19 shock, our analysis relies on an identification strategy ruling out confounding effects by time-invariant unobservable variables. Moreover, we explain the remaining (intertemporal) variation in the individual WfH status by means of an instrumental variable strategy using variation in equipment with mobile devices among establishments. We find that subjective measures of individual health are partly affected by WfH, whereas no corresponding effect is present for an objective measure of individual health. In terms of individual well-being, we find that WfH leads to considerable improvement. By addressing the potential heterogeneity in our effect of interest, we find that men and middle-aged individuals particularly benefit from WfH.
... Happiness is distinct from, but reciprocally related to, social and economic wellbeing, and both are situated within health, which the World Health Organization defines as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" [3]. Mental health and happiness are key factors for productivity at the workplace [4,5], and many countries have identified happiness among citizens as of primary importance, far beyond the gross domestic product. For example, quality of life measures include the OECD Better Life Index and the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. ...
The happiness and mental health of individuals are crucial for national developments. In Saudi Arabia, wellbeing occupies a central position in Vision 2030, along with women’s empowerment. Rapidly changing rights and responsibilities might result in more sources of stress. The aim of this study was to explore happiness and mental health among Saudi women during their contributions to a fast-growing nation in all fields. We assessed happiness and mental health (somatic symptoms, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and social dysfunction) in 308 Saudi women aged 15–50 years using a self-administered online survey comprising the short Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ-8) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The participants demonstrated general satisfaction yet showed rising psychological distress. Married women reported better mental health compared to single women, particularly with regards to anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Depression was highest among younger women. Employed women demonstrated lower social functioning compared to unemployed women. Women with a higher educational level showed lower social functioning. Happiness scores were significantly and inversely related with overall mental health scores as well as mental health subscales (somatic, anxiety, and depression), except for social dysfunction, which showed a positive correlation to happiness scores. This study contributes to the body of literature on women’s mental health and happiness by providing recommendations for improving both as well as directions for future research.
... Approximately 2.8 million working Australians experience mental ill-health (9). These challenges can impair an individual's ability to attend work or to function effectively when they do attend (10,11), costing workplaces an estimated $17 billion (Australian dollars) a year (9). While employment can cause or exacerbate mental illhealth (12), workplaces also have the opportunity to help prevent or mitigate it (13,14). ...
Objectives:
Mental well-being is critical to quality of life. Workplace mental well-being is crucial to ensure employee health, satisfaction, and performance. Mental ill-health is a global challenge, costing workplaces $17 billion per year. Workplaces have realized the need for investment in interventions to promote mental health and well-being in their workforce. However, given their limited resources, workplace personnel responsible for program implementation need evidence-based guidance on which interventions influence which outcomes.
Methods:
This study employed a scoping review methodology in order to produce an evidence map and includes reviews of workplace mental well-being interventions. The search strategy focused on peer-reviewed articles with the primary aim of investigating workplace mental health interventions. Reviews were assessed for quality using AMSTAR 2. The evidence map includes interventions (rows) and outcomes (columns), with the relative size of the reviews underpinning each intersection represented by circles and the direction of evidence represented by color.
Results:
Eighty reviews were deemed eligible from 4795 citations. The resulting evidence map includes 17 intervention types designed to influence 12 outcomes. Interventions with the highest quality evidence were mindfulness, education and information provision, and individual psychological therapies. The most common outcomes were burnout / stress reduction and mental well-being. Interventions tended to focus on individual level factors rather than organizational or system-level factors.
Conclusion:
The evidence-base for workplace mental health interventions is broad and extensive. There is an apparent knowledge-to-practice gap, presenting challenges to implementing workplace mental health programs (ie, what interventions have the highest quality evidence). This study aims to fill the gap by providing an interactive evidence-map. Future research should look to fill the gaps within the map including the lack of organization and system level factors and especially economic evaluations.
... The systematic review was conducted addressing the following inclusion criteria: (1) The sample included employees and/or owners/managers; (2) The intervention at the workplace was aimed to reduce stigma; (3) The outcomes were measured in terms of stigmatisation against depression, anxiety and/or other mental health problems; (4) Studies had an experimental or quasi-experimental design (including quantitative data); (5) The studies were published in English; (6) The intervention was delivered through the workplace; and (7) The studies were published between January 2010 and July 2021. ...
Objectives
Increasing access to mental health support is a key factor for treating mental disorders, however, important barriers complicate help-seeking, among them, mental health related stigma being most prominent. We aimed to systematically review the current evidence for interventions focusing on reducing stigma related to mental health problems in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Design
Systematic review with a focus on interventions targeting mental health related stigma in the workplace in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. The methodological quality of included articles was assessed using the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies Scale.
Data sources
PubMed, Ovid Medline, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Cochrane databases and Google Scholar were searched from January 2010 until November 2022.
Eligibility criteria for selecting studies
We included experimental or quasi-experimental studies about workplace interventions aiming to reduce stigma, where the outcomes were measured in terms of stigmatisation against depression, anxiety and/or other mental health problems.
Data extraction and synthesis
Records were screened by two independent reviewers after inspecting titles and abstracts and a full-text read of the articles to assess whether they meet inclusion criteria. The results were synthesised narratively.
Results
We identified 22 intervention studies, 3 with high quality, 13 with moderate quality and 6 with weak quality. Only 2 studies included SMEs, but no study focused on SMEs exclusively . The mode of delivery of the intervention was face to face in 15 studies, online in 4 studies and mixed in 3 studies. We found a significant reduction in stigmatising attitudes in almost all studies (20/22), using 10 different instruments/scales. Effects seemed to be independent of company size. Online interventions were found to be shorter, but seemed to be as effective as face-to-face interventions.
Conclusions
Although we did not find interventions focusing exclusively on SMEs, it is likely that antistigma interventions also will work in smaller workplaces.
Trial registration
PROSPERO: ID: CRD42020191307
... Problemfeld Im Homeoffice sind neben arbeitsschutzrechtlichen Bestimmungen allfällige Faktoren wie die Arbeitsplatzzufriedenheit, die Produktivität und das Wohlbefinden der Arbeitnehmer:innen zu berücksichtigen. Die Arbeit im Homeoffice bedingt daher die Schaffung geeigneter Heim-Arbeitsplätze, welche bedürfnisgerecht zu konzipieren sind (Bubonya et al., 2017;Hoffman et al., 2020). Der Arbeitsplatz sollte jedenfalls so gestaltet sein, dass ergonomische und technische Anforderungen erfüllt sind. ...
Homeoffice ist nur eine Variante von Telearbeit. Daneben gibt es auch die Möglichkeit, Büros außerhalb des offiziellen Firmengebäudes oder der eigenen Wohnung zu nutzen.
... The mental health of individuals living in an area is of policy relevance since it has important implications for both individuals and wider society. A persons' mental health state has been demonstrated to affect productivity [10], and overall quality of life and physical health [11]. In the US, the cost per individual with major depression disorder has been estimated as $6524 for 2018, with the national economic burden of adults with major depression disorder estimated at $326.2 billion (encompassing direct medical and pharmaceutical-related costs, suicide-related costs, and workplace costs) [12]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic saw residential neighbourhoods become more of a focal point in people's lives, where people were greater confined to living, working, and undertaking leisure in their locality. This study investigates whether area-level deprivation and neighbourhood conditions influence mental health, accounting for demographic, socio-economic and health circumstances of individuals. Using nationally representative data from Ireland, regression modelling revealed that area-level deprivation did not in itself have a discernible impact on mental health status (as measured using the Mental Health Inventory-5 instrument and the Energy and Vitality Index), or likelihood of having suffered depression in the previous 12 months. However, positive perceptions of area safety, service provision, and area cleanliness were associated with better mental health, as was involvement in social groups. Broad ranging policies investing in neighbourhoods, could have benefits for mental health, which may be especially important for deprived communities.
... This suggests mental health may be a concern for university and medical staff during the pandemic and that particular attention should be paid to onsite clinical staff who may experience worse anxiety. Ongoing monitoring of mental health in this population will be critical, especially as the pandemic is ongoing, and understanding mental health and well-being trends in this population can inform public health interventions and policies (Bianchi et al., 2015;Bubonya et al., 2017;Prince et al., 2007). Another important finding from our study was that health behaviors may act as a protective factor for mental health and well-being. ...
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic affected well-being and health behaviors, especially among healthcare workers and employees in other fields. This is of public health concern because health behaviors and well-being influence long-term negative health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to explore health behaviors and well-being among university and medical center staff during COVID-19.
Methods
EMPOWER (Employee Well-being during Epidemic Response) was a three-wave observational study (wave 1: 1,994; wave 2: 1,426; wave 3: 1,363) measuring health behaviors and well-being of university and medical center staff. Surveys were disseminated online to all employees between April and September 2020. Descriptive statistics explored trends across waves for health behaviors (physical activity [PA], diet), and well-being (mental well-being [MWB], depression, anxiety, and stress). Logistic regressions explored associations between health behaviors and well-being factors adjusting for demographics and clinical role. Interactions explored moderation by clinical role.
Results
Most participants reported same/healthier changes in PA (54–65%) and diet (57–73%) and decreased MWB across waves (62%–69%). Nonclinical workers were less likely than clinical workers to experience worse MWB and moderate/severe anxiety and stress (odds ratios [ORs] ranged from 0.38 to 0.58 across waves and well-being outcomes). Participants who maintained/increased PA and diet were less likely to experience worse well-being (ORs ranged from 0.44 to 0.69 across waves and well-being outcomes). Interactions by clinical role were not significant.
Conclusion/Application to Practice
Maintaining/increasing health behaviors during COVID-19 may be protective of mental health/well-being in some healthcare workers. These findings support health promotion efforts focused on maintaining or improving diet and PA.
... Mental health is undoubtedly one of the vital resources to survive in this pandemic (da Silva et al., 2020) as well as maintaining productivity (Bubonya, Cobb-Clark, & Wooden, 2017). However, the extent to which the effect of perceived stress on positive mental health is mediated through technology acceptance has not yet examined. ...
The COVID-19 outbreak forces teachers to accelerate the ICT implementation in teaching delivery. The change in teaching delivery might trigger psychological impacts such as stress and mental health. Technology acceptance is a prerequisite factor to reduce resistance to online learning. The role of technology acceptance on the relationship between perceived stress and positive mental health has not yet been examined. The paper presents the study on the role of technology acceptance related to stress and positive mental health among Indonesian teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample is 706 participants aged 22- 60 years (71% female and 29% male). The measures are the technology acceptance questionnaire, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and Positive Mental Health Scale (PMHscale). The result showed that perceived stress has a negative association with both technology acceptance (r=-355) and positive mental health (r=-.551). On the other hand, technology acceptance has been significantly associated with positive mental health (r=.349). The less stress experienced by teachers, the higher technology acceptance and positive mental health. The path analysis indicated a significant effect of perceived stress on technology acceptance (12.6%), perceived stress to positive mental health (30.4%), and technology acceptance to positive mental health (12.2%). The effect of technology acceptance as a mediator between perceived stress to positive mental health was slightly little (12.2) while 75.75% contributed by other variables. It was concluded that there might be different protective mechanisms for the teacher's positive mental health in the context of professional adaptation of the COVID-19 pandemic. By examining technology acceptance and its relation to stress and mental health of teachers will help educational leaders to provide training and continuous support to improve the quality teaching and teacher’s mental health. For further study, it could examine other psychological attributes related to technology acceptance with a wider population and robust data analysis.
... 4 Along with the above-mentioned metal and physical diseases, the highest financial costs of employee mental illness are related to reduced productivity. 5 Healthcare workers (HCWs) experience high levels of workplace stress due to job sensitivity and may even be higher than other occupational groups. [6][7][8][9] Primary healthcare (PHC) systems are responsible for providing services such as disease management, health education and family healthcare. ...
Objectives
Work-related stress is a common risk factor among healthcare workers (HCWs). In Iran, the healthcare system has undergone extensive changes to develop services. Organisational change has led to the creation of new working conditions for HCWs. The purpose of this study is to identify job demands that health workers perceive as stressors.
Design
As a qualitative study, semistructured interviews, a focus group, and related data were analysed both inductively and deductively with reference to the job demand component based on the job demands–resources model and MAXQDA.
Setting
This investigation was conducted in 18 primary healthcare centres in Qazvin, Iran.
Participant
Twenty-one female HCWs with at least 6 months of work experience and an average age of 34.4 years.
Results
The participants identified six key elements as the stressful job demands including organisation’s supervisory function, role characteristics, workload, job insecurity, client service challenges and perceived job content.
Conclusions
After organisational changes and development, HCWs were faced with role changes and increased workload. In addition, organisational supervision in terms of quantity and quality and lack of job security intensified the pressures. These factors led to the high level of stress among employees who dealt with people and those who perceived their job content as unfavourable. Perhaps teaching stress control skills and organisational support interventions can be useful to reduce and control stress among HCWs.
... Mental illnesses affect 10 to 20% of the adolescent population worldwide [1]. Evidence shows a strong positive association between mental illness experienced during adolescence and negative life outcomes, such as lower educational attainment [2,3] and decreased work productivity [4]. Additionally, most mental health problems affecting adults originate in adolescence [5]. ...
As digital devices like computers become more widely available in developing countries, there is a growing need to understand how the time that adolescents spend using these devices for recreational purposes such as playing video games is linked with their mental health outcomes. We measured the amount of time that adolescents in rural China spent playing video games and the association of video game time with their mental health. We collected data from primary and junior high schools in a poor, rural province in northwest China (n = 1603 students) and used the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) to measure mental health symptoms. The results indicated that the average video game time was about 0.69 h per week. There was a significant association between adolescent video game time and poorer mental health. Each additional hour of playing video games also increased the chance of having moderate or above symptoms. Moreover, boys and non-left-behind children had worse mental health if they played more video games. Our study contributes to literature on the links between recreational screen time and mental health, and it sheds light on an issue addressed by recent government legislation to limit the video game time of minors in China.
... Previous research has found that employees' mental health status significantly affects their performance (Bubonya et al., 2017;Cohen et al., 2019;Soeker et al., 2019), the main reasons of which are as follows: First, mental health problems reduce employees' focus on their work, which is potentially detrimental to their performance (Hennekam et al., 2020). Second, mental health problems may render employees unable to work (Heffernan and Pilkington, 2011), which indirectly reduces work efficiency owing to increased sick leaves (Levinson et al., 2010). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak—as a typical emergency event—significantly has impacted employees' psychological status and thus has negatively affected their performance. Hence, along with focusing on the mechanisms and solutions to alleviate the impact of work stress on employee performance, we also examine the relationship between work stress, mental health, and employee performance. Furthermore, we analyzed the moderating role of servant leadership in the relationship between work stress and mental health, but the result was not significant. The results contribute to providing practical guidance for enterprises to improve employee performance in the context of major emergencies.
... 18.3% of the respondents felt a marginal decline in their productivity as compared to the pre-pandemic times. Decreased productivity can increase cases concerning mental health issues (Bubonya et al., 2017). A decrease in productivity can also be a cause of increased work pressure. ...
This chapter is an attempt to analyse the key factors of adoption of alternative business models by the handicraft artisans during COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is a part of doctoral study and is based on the part of primary research conducted by the scholar. The study primarily analyses the strength of the relationship of the factors. A structured questionnaire was employed to collect data for conducting the study. Descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple linear regressions have been used as statistical tools for analysis. The findings of the study demonstrate the linkage and effect of critical aspects on the performance of alternative business models, resulting in conclusions that leave room for future research. The novelty of this study is that it has made an initial attempt to identify the key factors of adoption of the alternative business model for the artisans. The study is limited to a specific field of the craft sector. The policy-makers will have substantial theoretical consequences for the development of the artisans regarding their alternative business model. It is important to improve artisan’s entrepreneurial skills and capabilities to strengthen them in the global market today.KeywordsAlternative businessHandicraft sectorArtisanCOVID-19Social media
... However, the inconsistent findings may also be related more directly to employers' evaluations of the specific type of impairment. Employers are, for example, more likely to expect higher levels of sickness absence and associated costs from applicants who disclose a history of mental health problems than from applicants who disclose that they are wheelchair users (e.g., Bubonya, Cobb-Clark and Wooden, 2017;Janssens et al., 2021;Østerud, 2022). Mental illness accounts for a significant proportion of the doctor-certified sick leave in the Norwegian labor market, estimated at about 16 per cent in 2020 and 2021 (Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, 2021). ...
Recent field experiments have documented that discrimination constitutes a barrier to employment for people with disabilities. Less is known about how disability discrimination varies across contexts in the labor market. This study explores whether hiring discrimination based on a history of mental health problems and against wheelchair users varies with company size using data from two field experiments. The study provides mixed evidence suggesting that the negative effect of disclosing a history of mental health problems on employers' hiring decisions does not vary with company size, whereas discrimination against wheelchair users occurs less often in large companies.
... Ghanavati, Keshavarzi, & Hosseini, 2017), pekerjaan kantor (Lamb & Kwok, 2016), pekerjaan customer-facing retail yang berhadapan langsung dengan pelanggan (Patel, Pearce, & Bachrach, 2018) dan terus berkembang hingga saat ini. Perkembangan studi mengenai kesejahteraan atau kesehatan mental karyawan tak lepas dari temuan prevalensi masalah kesehatan mental yang cukup tinggi (Fushimi dkk., 2010) dan dampaknya pada performansi kerja, misalnya dalam bentuk absenteeism (Bubonya, Cobb-Clark, & Wooden, 2017). Mengoptimalkan kesejahteraan karyawan menjadi isu penting karena berimplikasi pada optimalisasi capaian organisasi. ...
Penelitian ini bertujuan mengeksplorasi distres psikologis sebagai risiko masalah kesehatan mental di antara tenaga kependidikan perguruan tinggi negeri berbadan hukum. Sejumlah 178 tenaga kependidikan dari Perguruan Tinggi Negeri Berbadan Hukum ‘X’ (Laki-laki=41,6%) terlibat dalam penelitian ini. Distres psikologis diukur menggunakan General Health Questionnaire-12 (Cronbach α = 0,857), yang memuat dimensi disfungsi sosial, kecemasan dan depresi, dan kehilangan kepercayaan diri. Statistik deskriptif dan uji beda nonparametrik dilakukan dalam analisis data. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa sebesar 26,4% subjek berisiko memiliki masalah kesehatan mental umum (cut-off score 10/11). Baik jenis kelamin maupun bidang keilmuan tidak membedakan level distres psikologis secara general maupun menurut dimensinya. Mayoritas manifestasi distres psikologis ditemukan pada dimensi disfungsi sosial, sedangkan terendah pada dimensi kehilangan kepercayaan diri. Hal tersebut didukung perbedaan mean skor antar dimensi yang signifikan, secara berturut dari yang tertinggi adalah disfungsi sosial, kecemasan dan depresi, dan kehilangan kepercayaan diri. Self-serving bias diduga berperan sebagai strategi penanggulangan dari ancaman terhadap diri sehingga meningkatkan penghargaan terhadap diri. Temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan perlunya menyediakan program kesehatan mental bagi tenaga kependidikan perguruan tinggi.
... Mental health is undoubtedly one of the vital resources to survive in this pandemic (da Silva et al., 2020) as well as maintaining productivity (Bubonya, Cobb-Clark, & Wooden, 2017). However, the extent to which the effect of perceived stress on positive mental health is mediated through technology acceptance has not yet examined. ...
Bidayuh is an indigenous group living in Sarawak, Malaysia. The study examined the perceptions of Bidayuh people on the importance of the Bidayuh language. The specific aspects studied were the reasons for the importance of the Bidayuh language and the connotative meanings of the language. Questionnaire data were obtained from 61 Bidayuh participants from Sarawak. Results showed the participants felt that the Bidayuh language is important because of government agencies and non-governmental organisations looking after the customary laws, culture and language of the Bidayuh. They also felt that the presence of highly-educated Bidayuh and Bidayuh leaders in the community, as well as the Bidayuh population in Sarawak, contributed to the importance of the Bidayuh language. These could have led to perceptions of Bidayuh as a prestigious language. The participants felt that the Bidayuh language will be stronger if it is taught in school because there are currently inadequate written materials in Bidayuh. The Bidayuh language is valued as an ethnic marker but not for instrumental purposes. The Bidayuh language is not seen as a language for rural and old people, suggesting that there is room for the intergenerational transmission of the Bidayuh language to the younger generation in urban areas.
... The literature defines a large number of factors that can positively and negatively affect work performance including mental health. According to Bubonya et al. (2017) employees with "emotional issues" show six times higher diminished productivity than employees in good mental health. The same authors recommend reducing job-related stress since it can be responsible for both absenteeism and productivity. ...
Teleworking, as a new method of work, implies working out of a designated office space using informational technologies. As a modern work practice, it became popular in recent years but abruptly developed in the last two years with the COVID-19 pandemic when a large number of companies were forced to perform remotely resulting in challenges. This research aims to examine how mental health can affect work performance in teleworking employees. The sample holds 134 respondents conventionally and remotely employed in Serbia who were interviewed using the CES-D self-assessment scale, with 20 questions measuring depressive symptomatology. This study demonstrates the connection between the methods of work and the mental state and their influence on work results. Teleworkers in Serbia show higher values of depression than conventional employees which can negatively affect their work performance. This research contributes to the improvement of remote employee management in Serbia and gives recommendations on how to notice depression in teleworkers, prevent it and reduce its effects.
... This measure is also valid and reliable and widely used across various types of jobs in many countries [40,[42][43][44]. Nevertheless, it is of great importance for further studies to employ other productivity measurements in future studies such as absenteeism, presenteeism, supervisor rating, and physiological index [59,60]. Second, our cross-sectional study design limits us to infer causality, thus longitudinal designs need to be applied in future studies to investigate how job boredom and stress develop over time and what their long-term productivity consequences are. ...
A creative and innovative workforce is a key determinant of the sustainability of the fashion industry in a highly competitive market. Such characteristics have been linked to employees’ well-being. This study aimed at examining to what extent the employees’ boredom, stress, and work performance levels in a medium-scale Muslim fashion Industry. We employed a cross-sectional study design by administering a set of questionnaires consisting of the Dutch Boredom Scale; Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale; and Individual Work Performance in a total sampling of 75 female workers. The association between key variables and demographic factors was analyzed using non-parametric tests while the relationship between boredom, stress, and work performance was analyzed using the regression. Less-educated employees reported more stress and lower work performance while their boredom levels were similar, compared to their counterparts. Job boredom and stress were higher among newly hired employees but no significant difference in self-reported productivity between the two job experience groups was observed. There are also no differences in job boredom, stress, and work performance between sales and non-sales groups. Our regression model shows that job boredom and stress were significant predictors to work performance after controlling age, education, job experience, and type of occupations. These findings support the importance of improving employees’ well-being for better individual performance which may, in turn, lead to any tangible organizational outcomes. Regardless of the case study design, our study may provide insights for other industrial sectors and beyond the context of small and medium enterprises.
... As an economic pillar of the household, the workforce plays an important role in supporting the family and faces great mental pressure. Unhealthy mental status of the workforce is not only harmful to family and society but also leads to productivity loss in the workplace (4,5). Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between household structure and the mental health of the workforce. ...
Based on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2010, this article investigates the relationship between household dependency ratio and the mental health of household workforce. The empirical results verify the negative impacts of both household old-age dependency ratio and child dependency ratio on the mental health of the workforce and find that the negative effect of old-age dependency ratio is greater than that of child dependency ratio. Moreover, the depression source of the young workforce mainly comes from the child dependency ratio, while the depression source of the older workforce comes from the old-age dependency ratio. The mental health of the workforce in poor regions is impaired by the household dependency burden, but we found no same evidence in rich regions. The old-age dependency ratio negatively affects the mental health of the workforce due to the household healthcare burden, while the child dependency ratio negatively affects the mental health of the workforce due to the education expenditure pressure. Our findings provide evidence on how household structure affects the welfare of the family, and give implications to the improvement of residents' health.
... WTC has been indicated to ameliorate some of the detrimental effects of high job demands. It buffers the influences of long working hours on poor physical and mental symptom frequency [13], work-family interference [14], and sickness absence [15]. A systematic review by Nijp, Beckers, Geurts, Tucker and Kompier [12] also highlighted the importance of WTC for employees which can be identified as a predictor of health issues (i.e., burnout and sleep), work-life balance, and several job-related outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction, attitudes, and turnover). ...
Overtime has become a widespread phenomenon in the current information age that creates a high speed working pace and fierce competition in the high technology global economy. Based on the time-regulation mechanism and effort-recovery model, we examined the effect of worktime control (WTC) on mental health and work-family conflict (WFC) among overtime employees, and whether voluntary overtime mediated the relationships. We also examined two separate dimensions of WTC (control over time-off and control over daily hours). The results showed that control over time-off was related to decreased depression, anxiety, stress and WFC, while control over daily hours was related to decreased stress and WFC. Generally, control over time-off was beneficial to females and employees with dependents. Furthermore, mediation results showed that voluntary overtime was a complete mediator of relationships between WTC and depression and anxiety as well as a partial mediator of the relationship between WTC and stress. However, this study did not find a mediating effect of voluntary overtime on the WTC-WFC relationship. Limitations and practical implications are discussed.
Background
This study examined the association between early parental death and children’s subsequent mental health, years of schooling, and labour-market outcomes (ie, employment and earnings) in adulthood.
Methods
We used nationwide register-based data for Finnish citizens born between 1971 and 1986 (n=962 350). Logistic and linear regression models were used to examine the association of early parental death before the age of 21 years with subsequent mental health and labour-market outcomes in adulthood at ages 26–30. The estimated models accounted for an extensive set of demographic and parental characteristics based on longitudinal register data.
Results
Early-life parental death was found to be consistently associated with a higher risk of hospitalisation due to mental health disorders, higher use of mental health-related medications, and absence from work due to illness in adulthood. The associations were negative regardless of the gender of the child or parent, but the estimated odds ratios were usually quantitatively larger for males than females. When examining the type of outcome, we observed the largest quantitative effects were observed using substance-use disorders and intentional self-harm as outcomes. Moreover, we documented considerable reductions in years of schooling, employment, and earnings in adulthood.
Conclusions
Parental death before the age of 21 was significantly associated with an increased risk of being diagnosed with a mental disorder and lower level of economic well-being measured by labour-market success in adulthood.
Background
There is sparse evidence on the impact of health information on mental health as well as on the mechanisms governing this relationship. We estimate the causal impact of health information on mental health via the effect of a diabetes diagnosis on depression.
Methods
We employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting the exogenous cut-off value of a biomarker used to diagnose type-2 diabetes (glycated haemoglobin, HbA1c) and information on psycometrically validated measures of diagnosed clinical depression drawn from rich administrative longitudinal individual-level data from a large municipality in Spain. This approach allows estimating the causal impact of a type-2 diabetes diagnosis on clinica ldepression.
Results
We find that overall a type-2 diabetes diagnosis increases the probability of becoming depressed, however this effect appears to be driven mostly by women, and in particular those who are relatively younger and obese. Results also appear to differ by changes in lifestyle induced by the diabetes diagnosis: while women who did not lose weight are more likely to develop depression, men who did lose weight present a reduced probability of being depressed. Results are robust to alternative parametric and non-parametric specifications and placebo tests.
Conclusions
The study provides novel empirical evidence on the causal impact of health information on mental health, shedding light on gender-based differences in such effects and potential mechanisms through changes in lifestyle behaviours.
Zusammenfassung
Die Beziehung zwischen Führungskraft und Beschäftigten gilt als wichtiger Einflussfaktor auf psychisches Wohlergehen am Arbeitsplatz. Mit Begriffen wie Toxic Leadership oder Abusive Supervision ist betriebliche Führung zuletzt häufiger in ihren dysfunktionalen Anteilen beschrieben worden. Der Artikel stellt die Ergebnisse eines systematischen Reviews zum Zusammenhang von destruktiven Führungsformen und psychischer Beschäftigtengesundheit dar. Auf Grundlage definierter Einschlusskriterien und einer systematischen Literaturrecherche konnten 36 Primärstudien identifiziert werden. Als Indikatoren für psychische Beeinträchtigungen wurden (1) subklinische Symptome psychischer Störungen (2) Burn-out und emotionale Erschöpfung sowie (3) allgemeine Merkmale für aversiv erlebte psychische Beanspruchung erfasst (z. B. erhöhtes Stresserleben). Es ergab sich eine gepoolte Effektstärke von r = 0,31 (CI95 0,26–0,37). Aufgrund der überwiegend querschnittlichen Studiendesigns, einiger Limitationen in der Erfassung destruktiver Führung sowie ermittelter Hinweise für das Vorliegen von Publikationsverzerrungen erfolgt eine methodenkritische Diskussion des gegenwärtigen Forschungsfeldes.
Praktische Relevanz: Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, destruktive Führungsformen auch in Praxisfeldern verstärkt unter einer systemischen Perspektive zu betrachten. Eine Überwindung des Leader-Zentrismus wird als wichtige Voraussetzung zur Ableitung zielgerichteter Präventionsmaßnahmen diskutiert. Dazu könnte die Etablierung von Führungskräfte-Trainings gehören, die der Entwicklung destruktiver Führungsformen vorbeugen.
Mental health challenges are a ubiquitous workplace concern, with approximately 20% of people having a mental illness and most employees reporting at least one symptom of poor mental health. Yet, research on work and mental health challenges remains frag-mented and sparse. We provide a historical overview of workplace attention to mental health versus physical health, noting areas where workplaces’ response to physical health could serve as a model for attention to mental health. We then share results of an interdisciplinary review of 556 studies on mental health challenges and work, wherein we integrate themes in three broad categories: antecedents, outcomes, and interventions for mental health challenges. Our review suggests that a primary impediment to progress is the frequent theoretical and methodological conflation between (poor) mental health and mental illness, with unexplained inconsistency in the temporality, severity, and content of mental health measures across studies. Based on these findings, we present sugges-tions for critical areas of future research, including increased emphasis on proactive workplace interventions and research that addresses the distinction—and relationship— between mental health and mental illness at work. By elucidating the complex relationships between work and mental health, we hope to propel future research on mitigating and supporting employees’ mental health challenges.
Purpose
This study seeks to examine the mediating role of mental health issues in the workplace (MHIW) in explaining the complex relationship between person-organization-fit (P.O-fit) dimensions and workers' productivity (WP) variance during COVID-19 in the Egyptian soap and detergents industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a cross-sectional survey, the authors collected data from 373 frontline workers and supervisors working at ARMA soap and detergents (ASD) factories. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 production-lines and quality-control supervisors. The hypothesized model was analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique.
Findings
The authors found a significant, high P.O-fit level among ASD workers. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit controlled MHIW. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit alongside MHIW explained the growth in WP during COVID-19. The MHIW mediated the relationship between P.O-fit dimensions and WP during the pandemic.
Research limitations/implications
Limited attention was paid to investigating how the P.O-fit dimensions enable frontline workers to remain productive despite the MHIW associated with COVID-19. This study bridges the aforementioned research gap by elucidating how the supplementary-fit, demand-abilities-fit and need-supplies-fit manipulate MHIW and maintain WP growth during the pandemic.
Practical implications
The findings provide clear guidelines for the first-line supervisors to foster the P.O-fit dimensions, control MHIW and sustain WP growth during COVID-19.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to add significant information on how MHIW (as mediator) explains the relationship between P.O-fit and WP growth during the pandemic.
This study investigated the features of the work environment in Arab industrial companies. This study was conducted by using a quantitative survey with 108 items that correspond to their views and opinions on their work environment and identify their individual stress and productivity levels based on a combination of four preexisting surveys; “Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)”, “Endicott Work Productivity Scale (EWPS)”, “Work Environment Survey (WES)” and “World Health Organisation—Workplace Health and Productivity Questionnaire (WHO-HPQ)”. A total of 434 responses were received on May 2022 from seven Arab countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). The study found a difference in the characteristics of the work environment in Arab industrial companies, where there is a difference in the attitudes of workers in those companies towards “Perceived Stress”, “Work Productivity”, “Work Environment”, and “Workplace Health and productivity” between Arab industrial companies according to the country. The study can explain this result according to the difference in financial and technology resources between manufacturing companies in the Arab Gulf versus Egypt and Jordan. Finally, there are two evidences that can be implemented immediately. A significant percentage of unsatisfied work environments are derived from a lack of relationships between supervisors and subordinates. It is therefore advisable for companies to devise a training programme to achieve a healthy work environment on the other hand.
This was an applied naturalistic study examining changes in work and clinical outcomes after using individual mental health coaching services from an employee assistance program in the United States. The data was from 872 employee users at CuraLinc Healthcare during the years 2020 to 2022. The coaching intervention included individual sessions that focused on helping the employee with personal goal setting, problem-solving and skill-building. Over two-thirds of clients engaged in coaching for support with mental health issues (anxiety 47%, depression 12% or other 9%) while others had issues of stress (19%), personal relationships (marital 8%, family 4%) or work (2%). The coaching was delivered online and usually lasted about five weeks. The study features a Pre to Post single-group research design with self-report data collected at the start of use and again at follow-up after the last session. Repeated measures ANOVA tests found significant improvement with each result being a large size statistical effect for the outcomes: work absenteeism hours were reduced by 88% (d=0.42); work productivity level was increased by 32% (d=0.79); severity of depression symptoms was reduced by 66% (d=0.67). Exploratory analyses indicated that improvement on outcomes was experienced consistently across different subgroups of clients based on age, gender, employer and service use factors. Having an absence problem was reduced from 42% of all clients at Pre to 7% at Post. Specific hours of missed work in the past month (measured by the Workplace Outcome Suite) changed from 6.7 hours at Pre to less than 1 hour at Post. Employees with a problem with their work productivity (i.e., low performance and lack of focus, measured by Stanford Presenteeism Scale) was reduced from 27% of clients at Pre to 1% at Post. Among the subsample of clients initially with a work productivity problem, 94% achieved "reliable recovery" with a larger than chance level increase in their productivity score. The average total hours of absence and lost work productivity combined in the past month was reduced from 52.8 hours at Pre to 14.5 hours at Post. The percentage of all employees at-risk for clinical depression (measured by the PHQ-9) was reduced from 20% of coaching clients at Pre to zero at Post. Within this at-risk subgroup, 85% achieved "reliable recovery" such that the differences in their scores was greater than at chance level. Coaching services thus appear to be a viable alternative to counseling for employees interested in more goal-oriented, solution-focused type of support.
In this paper, I investigate the mental health effects of job displacement in 1-adult and 2-adult households. In a 1-adult household, if a worker loses a job unexpectedly, significant mental health deterioration can become manifest. In a 2-adult household, the deterioration may be less severe for the displaced worker due to burden and risk sharing with the partner. However, in this 2-adult household, there exists the additional risk of the partner's unemployment, which could be detrimental to the worker's mental health. I compare the overall burden in 1- and 2-adult households and find no statistically significant difference. This follows because the distress associated with the partner's displacement is offset by the lower distress upon own displacement. Regarding gender differences, I show that job displacement upsets male and female workers for different reasons and to different extents depending on partnership status. These results offer fresh insights into unemployment shocks, the crucial role of partner support, and how the gender gap in mental health can be linked to household structure.
Considering the worsening levels of food insecurity globally, studies exploring the link between financial inclusion and food insecurity have become imperative. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the effect of financial inclusion on food insecurity using a multidimensional index of financial inclusion and a food insecurity construct obtained from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Based on data extracted from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, our preferred endogeneity-corrected results indicate that improvements in financial inclusion is associated with a reduction in food insecurity. This finding is consistent across different conceptualisations of food insecurity, alternative weighting schemes and cut-offs for the financial inclusion index and different quasi-experimental methods. Financial inclusion is mainly effective in reducing food insecurity in male-headed and rural-located households. Our findings reveal that entrepreneurship is an important pathway through which financial inclusion influences food insecurity.
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We here address the causal relationship between the maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital using UK birth-cohort data. We find that an increase of one standard deviation (SD) in the maternal polygenic risk score for depression reduces their children's cognitive and non-cognitive skill scores by 5 to 7% of a SD throughout adolescence. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests addressing, among others, concerns about pleiotropy and dynastic effects. Our Gelbach decomposition analysis suggests that the strongest mediator is genetic nurture (through maternal depression itself), with genetic inheritance playing only a marginal role.
Objective:
This study aimed to examine the relationship between psychological distress and poverty among Japanese workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Method:
An internet based prospective cohort study was conducted. A total of 11,081 individuals who were not experiencing poverty at baseline in December 2020 were included. The exposure variable was psychological distress evaluated using the Kessler 6 scale at baseline. The outcome variable was whether participants were experiencing poverty at the one-year follow-up, as defined by household financial distress.
Result:
Compared to individuals without psychological distress, the adjusted odds ratios of household financial distress among those with mild and severe psychological distress were 2.88 (95% CI: 2.47-3.33, p < 0.001) and 3.19 (95% CI: 2.52-4.04, p < 0.001), respectively.
Conclusion:
Workers' psychological distress is a notable public health concern in the context of poverty.
Background
Mental health disorders in the workplace have increasingly been recognised as a problem in most countries given their high economic burden. However, few reviews have examined the relationship between mental health and worker productivity.Objective
To review the relationship between mental health and lost productivity and undertake a critical review of the published literature.MethodsA critical review was undertaken to identify relevant studies published in MEDLINE and EconLit from 1 January 2008 to 31 May 2020, and to examine the type of data and methods employed, study findings and limitations, and existing gaps in the literature. Studies were critically appraised, namely whether they recognised and/or addressed endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity, and a narrative synthesis of the existing evidence was undertaken.ResultsThirty-eight (38) relevant studies were found. There was clear evidence that poor mental health (mostly measured as depression and/or anxiety) was associated with lost productivity (i.e., absenteeism and presenteeism). However, only the most common mental disorders were typically examined. Studies employed questionnaires/surveys and administrative data and regression analysis. Few studies used longitudinal data, controlled for unobserved heterogeneity or addressed endogeneity; therefore, few studies were considered high quality.Conclusion
Despite consistent findings, more high-quality, longitudinal and causal inference studies are needed to provide clear policy recommendations. Moreover, future research should seek to understand how working conditions and work arrangements as well as workplace policies impact presenteeism.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationships among work–family conflict (WFC), cognitive regulation, psychological resilience (PR), psychological distress (PD), emotional exhaustion (EE) and subjective well-being (SWB) in a very complex model based on job demands–resources. Also, mediator roles of PD, PR and EE are analyzed.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for the study were collected from 158 full-time nurses working in two hospitals in North Cyprus. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the model.
Findings
The authors’ findings reveal that cognitive emotion regulation reduces employees' WFC. WFC also has a negative effect on employees' SWB directly and through the mediating role of EE. However, the role of PR in the relationship between cognitive emotion regulation and PD was not significant.
Originality/value
The study adds the original views for hospitals and service providers to recognize the factors which exert detrimental effects on employees' mental health and also the factors which help them to tackle the harsh situation specifically in the time of crisis. Theoretical and practical implications are provided in the study.
p> This study aims to determine the effect of Cyberloafing and Productivity with Mental Health as a mediator. This research uses a quantitative approach method and the sample is taken using a random probability sampling technique with the population being employees of companies in Indonesia that carry out cyberloafing. Data collection was done online using google form and resulted in 193 responses that could be used. The results showed that all hypotheses were not supported, which means that cyberloafing had no effect on mental health and productivity. Further testing with Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) found that the characteristics of the respondents showed different results. In male respondents, cyberloafing had a positive effect on productivity. The respondents from service industry employee group also showed similar results, cyberloafing had a positive effect on productivity. Meanwhile, in respondents with married status showed that cyberloafing had a negative effect on mental health and productivity. These interesting findings from the test results on different characteristics of respondents can enrich studies on cyberloafing, mental health and employee productivity. The results obtained from this study are expected to provide benefits for company management in regulating internet use policies during working hours to ensure employee productivity is maintained. </p
Although there is a large body of literature on the direct effects of job conditions such as job insecurity and job stress on mental health, little is known about how these job conditions may modify the impact of mental health shocks originating from sources unrelated to the labour market. This paper’s aim is to fill this gap. Using the panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we first establish that negative life events unrelated to the labour market have a significant adverse impact on individuals’ mental health, and then we demonstrate that both job insecurity and job stress exacerbate this impact. We also find gender heterogeneity in the results that shows job insecurity and job stress affect female workers primarily and more severely.
The restrictions due to the pandemic have impacted mental health worldwide. The pandemic instigated health and financial pressure on everyone. The research aims to analyse the impact of the lockdown and pandemic on the mental health of the youth in India, understand the reasons behind it and try to examine whether it should be continued after the lockdown. The study also seeks to understand whether the government response to the distress created mentally by the coronavirus pandemic has been adequate or not. This study is based on primary data collected from the youth of tier-one cities in India, using web-based surveys, focus group discussions, and semi-structured interviews. Through the research, variables that impact mental health have been identified, which include sleep patterns, generalized anxiety, screen time, social media usage, life satisfaction, work pressure, the environment at home, work satisfaction, sense of productivity, physical activities, and interpersonal conflicts. There has been an inadequate promotion of the initiatives undertaken by the government, leading to unawareness of these schemes. The research observed, an increased work pressure, screen time, and generalized anxiety, and a decrease in work satisfaction, productivity, sleep time, and personal space. This research is essential to understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of mental health deterioration and to come up with methods to help curb these problems in the long run. The research, however, has shortcomings including small sample size, and an under-representation of the marginalized income group.
We use the Italian Statistical Institute survey that comprises about 80,000 questionnaires representative of the overall population between 15 and 90 years old to estimate the impact of chronic migraine on absenteeism and labour productivity. Using an ordinary least squares method to determine the direct effect of chronic migraine on labour productivity, we show that a 10 per cent increase in the number of people with chronic migraine increases absenteeism by 11 per cent and reduces labour productivity by 1.1 per cent per year. However, the effects of chronic migraine on absenteeism and labour productivity vary substantially between regions and sectors. Also, the comorbidity of chronic migraine with other illnesses, especially psychological illnesses, contributes to decreasing labour productivity. Most important, the results obtained at the micro level are similar and even more robust at the macro level. The results refer to a specific country, but we claim they can apply to other countries.
Organizational communication is particularly important during times of uncertainty and turmoil, such as the first few weeks of COVID-19 in the United States. This paper explores the who, what, when, and how of organizational communication during this time, looking at how these factors affected satisfaction with communication and anxiety among a sample of working adults. Through path analysis the paper suggests that having the direct manager communicate, communicating personal messages of support, communicating daily, and communicating via text media are related to higher levels of satisfaction with communication, and in turn with lower levels of anxiety. Individual traits of the employee are also discussed, including the need for affiliation as a moderator on the relationship between communication satisfaction and anxiety. Finally, suggestions are presented regarding how organizations can best leverage communication in novel and uncertain situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background:
The Mental Health Quotient (MHQ) is an anonymous web-based assessment of mental health and well-being that comprehensively covers symptoms across 10 major psychiatric disorders, as well as positive elements of mental function. It uses a novel life impact scale and provides a score to the individual that places them on a spectrum from Distressed to Thriving along with a personal report that offers self-care recommendations. Since April 2020, the MHQ has been freely deployed as part of the Mental Health Million Project.
Objective:
This paper demonstrates the reliability and validity of the MHQ, including the construct validity of the life impact scale, sample and test-retest reliability of the assessment, and criterion validation of the MHQ with respect to clinical burden and productivity loss.
Methods:
Data were taken from the Mental Health Million open-access database (N=179,238) and included responses from English-speaking adults (aged≥18 years) from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, India, and Nigeria collected during 2021. To assess sample reliability, random demographically matched samples (each 11,033/179,238, 6.16%) were compared within the same 6-month period. Test-retest reliability was determined using the subset of individuals who had taken the assessment twice ≥3 days apart (1907/179,238, 1.06%). To assess the construct validity of the life impact scale, additional questions were asked about the frequency and severity of an example symptom (feelings of sadness, distress, or hopelessness; 4247/179,238, 2.37%). To assess criterion validity, elements rated as having a highly negative life impact by a respondent (equivalent to experiencing the symptom ≥5 days a week) were mapped to clinical diagnostic criteria to calculate the clinical burden (174,618/179,238, 97.42%). In addition, MHQ scores were compared with the number of workdays missed or with reduced productivity in the past month (7625/179,238, 4.25%).
Results:
Distinct samples collected during the same period had indistinguishable MHQ distributions and MHQ scores were correlated with r=0.84 between retakes within an 8- to 120-day period. Life impact ratings were correlated with frequency and severity of symptoms, with a clear linear relationship (R2>0.99). Furthermore, the aggregate MHQ scores were systematically related to both clinical burden and productivity. At one end of the scale, 89.08% (8986/10,087) of those in the Distressed category mapped to one or more disorders and had an average productivity loss of 15.2 (SD 11.2; SEM [standard error of measurement] 0.5) days per month. In contrast, at the other end of the scale, 0% (1/24,365) of those in the Thriving category mapped to any of the 10 disorders and had an average productivity loss of 1.3 (SD 3.6; SEM 0.1) days per month.
Conclusions:
The MHQ is a valid and reliable assessment of mental health and well-being when delivered anonymously on the web.
Poor health in the workforce is costly to employers and the economy. This is partly due to health problems causing people to spend less time at work but is also due to people being less productive while at work. In this paper, we investigate the causes of dysfunctional presenteeism, defined as reduced productivity at work due to health problems. We find that both physical and mental health significantly predict the probability of dysfunctional presenteeism, and the effects of mental health problems seem to be worse than physical health. In comparison, changes to most other characteristics have little or no effect.
An important value of each enterprise is its intellectual capital, which is the basis for the production and sale of quality products and obtaining successful financial results from the activities carried out. Mental health is one of the key qualitative characteristics of the state of intellectual capital of the enterprise and the implementation of intellectual activity. Mental health includes the emotional, psychological and social well-being of staff and managers. It affects how they think, feel, act, and also determines how employees cope with stress, treat other employees and make choices. The article is aimed at analyzing the importance of mental health as a factor influencing the intellectual ability of employees and characterizing ways to improve it in order to increase intellectual activity. The publication proves that poor mental health is often the cause of burnout among employees, which seriously affects their ability to effectively perform their professional duties. This is especially true for employees who carry out intellectual activities in the enterprise. In developed countries, there has been a long-time public awareness of the importance of maintaining proper mental health, especially at work. Also in many countries there are the State-based programs to ensure the mental well-being of employees and a significant number of foundations, associations and unions of psychologists who carry out practical activities in this area and help both employees in particular and business in general. It is concluded that human resources have effective tools, the use of which will help to positively affect the mental health of their intellectual workers.
Objective
The Job Demand & Resources (JD-R) model suggests work characteristics are related to mental well-being and work engagement. Previous work describes the development of a combined construct ‘engaged well-being at work’ (EWB). To what extent changes in measures of this construct are responsive to changes in job demands and resources or associated with changes in job-related attitudes has not been established.
Methods
Longitudinal employee-level data from three waves (German Linked Personnel Panel) were used. Logistic and linear fixed effects regression analyses explored longitudinal associations between changes in EWB for participants over a three-year period with changes in job demands and resources, and job-related attitudes (job commitment, satisfaction, and turnover intentions).
Results
While job resources were associated with increased odds for a change into a healthier and/or more engaged category of EWB, job demands reduced them. Job resources were more strongly related to higher EWB (ORrange = 1.22 – 1.61) than job demands (ORrange = 0.79 – 0.96). Especially psychological job demands showed negative associations with improved EWB (OR = 0.79). A change from the least desirable category ‘disengaged strain’ to any other category of EWB was associated with greater odds by up to 20.6 % for increased commitment and job satisfaction and lower odds for turnover intentions.
Discussion
Improving work characteristics, especially job resources, could increase employees’ EWB, emphasizing the importance of job characteristics for a healthy workplace. Because EWB seems to be associated with job attitudes, an improvement of this indicator would be relevant for employees and employers.
Though in recent years there has been an increase in awareness regarding the gap between cisgender male and female STEM researchers, there exists less understanding of the greater gap between cisgender and transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. The electrochemistry community is not unique amongst STEM fields in terms of the challenges faced by TBNGNC researchers, but as electrochemists, we believe that the field is behind where it could be. Herein, we discuss the challenges faced by TNBGNC individuals, successfully implemented policies to support these individuals, and directions the community can take to continue in this positive direction.
Purpose of the study: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the changes in working conditions, the fear of being contaminated at the work place and job insecurity can have a significant impact on the mental health of employees. The objective of this study was to measure the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of employees under follow-up in an occupational health service and to identify the factors associated with stress and fear at work.
Method: An anonymous and confidential questionnaire was offered to employees coming to occupational health visit in early October and November 2020.
Results: 1797 employees responded. Nearly 40% had manifestations of anxiety disorders and 20% had depressive signs. From the beginning of the crisis, almost a third of employees were more stressed than before and 21% happened to be afraid at work. Being more stressed at work was associated with gender, number of employees, seniority, working in the health sector, feeling affected by SARS-COV2, being at risk of severe covid-19, feeling exposed to SARS-COV2 at work, feeling insecure at work and having difficulties to apply barrier measures. The multivariate model analysis looking at factors associated to fear at work had similar findings.
Conclusion: This study confirms and quantifies the importance of stress, feelings of insecurity and tensions at work. These results emphasized the role of an occupational health service in the face of a health crisis to best support employees and employers.
italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Goal:
We propose novel supervised control architectures to regulate the cognitive stress state and close the loop.
Methods:
We take information present in underlying neural impulses of skin conductance signals and employ model-based control techniques to close the loop in a state-space framework. For performance enhancement, we establish a supervised knowledge-based layer to update control system in real time. In the supervised architecture, the controller parameters are being updated in real-time.
Results:
Statistical analyses demonstrate the efficiency of supervised control architectures in improving the closed-loop results while maintaining stress levels within a desired range with more optimized control efforts. The model-based approaches would guarantee the control system-perspective criteria such as stability and optimality, and the proposed supervised knowledge-based layer would further enhance their efficiency.
Conclusion:
Outcomes in this in silico study verify the proficiency of the proposed supervised architectures to be implemented in the real world.
Background:
The studies on the associations between psychosocial work factors and sickness absence have rarely included a large number of factors and European data. The objective was to examine the associations between a large set of psychosocial work factors following well-known and emergent concepts and sickness absence in Europe.
Methods:
The study population consisted of 14,881 male and 14,799 female workers in 31 countries from the 2005 European Working Conditions Survey. Psychosocial work factors included the following: decision latitude, psychological demands, social support, physical violence, sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying, long working hours, shift and night work, job insecurity, job promotion and work-life imbalance. Covariates were as follows: age, occupation, economic activity, employee/self-employed status and physical, chemical, biological and biomechanical exposures. Statistical analysis was performed using multilevel negative binomial hurdle models to study the occurrence and duration of sickness absence.
Results:
In the models, including all psychosocial work factors together and adjustment for covariates, high psychological demands, discrimination, bullying, low-job promotion and work-life imbalance for both genders and physical violence for women were observed as risk factors of the occurrence of sickness absence. Bullying and shift work increased the duration of absence among women. Bullying had the strongest association with sickness absence.
Conclusion:
Various psychosocial work factors were found to be associated with sickness absence. A less conservative analysis exploring each factor separately provided a still higher number of risk factors. Preventive measures should take psychosocial work environment more comprehensively into account to reduce sickness absence and improve health at work at European level.
Many studies have shown that an unfavourable psychosocial environment increases the risk of mental and physical illness, as well as absenteeism, or sickness absence. However, more costly than absenteeism is presenteeism, where a person is present at work even though disabled by a mental or physical illness. We sought to identify factors explaining why workers would come to work even when their health is impaired. In a cross-sectional design data were collected from 3825 employees of a Canadian organisation. The results show a high occurrence of presenteeism: workers went to work in spite of illness 50% of the time. Presenteeism propensity (the percentage of days worked while ill over total number of sick days) was higher for workers who were ill more often. Heavier workloads, higher skill discretion, harmonious relationships with colleagues, role conflict and precarious job status increased presenteeism, but decision authority did not. Workers reporting high psychological distress and more severe psychosomatic complaints were also more likely to report higher rates of presenteeism. These results suggest that stress research should not only include absenteeism as an outcome indicator, but also consider presenteeism.
We use a time-based system to help organize, summarize, and analyze research on employee absenteeism published in the last 20 years (1977-1996). Although what is known about some mid-term (4-12 month) origins of absence-taking has been greatly clarified and expanded, less is known about long-term (> 12 months) and short-term (I day-3 months) origins, or about how causes in different time frames relate to each other. Poor performance and “neglectful” behaviors serve as reliable offshoots of absenteeism. The long- and short-term etiology of the latter behaviors is unclear, but their shared variance in the mid-term reflects negative job attitudes. Outcomes of absenteeism have received much less research attention. Although mid-term consequences such as reduced performance, turnover, and organizational expense are well-established, little is known about short- and long-term effects of absence-taking on individuals and their social environments. We conclude with suggestions for more explicit consideration of time frames, causal lags, and aggregation periods in the next decades of absenteeism research.
Despite the consistent finding in the absence literature that women tend to be absent more often than men, little attention has been paid to whether the process of absence differs by sex. This issue is examined using data collected from 1401 Australian employees from 61 different workplaces. Hypotheses suggest that the predictive ability of job satisfaction, age, commuting time, family responsibilities, stressful life events and shift work on absence behavior differs for men and women. To test these hypotheses, a multivariate model is developed and estimated. The results indicate that there are structural differences in the absence behavior of men and women, requiring the estimation of models separately for each sex. Moreover, strong support for all but one of the hypotheses is found. These results show the critical importance of considering the sex of employees when developing explanatory models of absence.
We develop the Barmby et al. (1993) model of absenteeism (which appeared in the Scandanavian Journal of Economics) to illustrate the potential for individu-als to engage in 'presenteeism' viz. attending work even when they are entitled to paid absence.
The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey includes twelve items that assess different psychosocial characteristics of work. However, these items are not drawn from an established scale and, therefore, we do not know the best way to combine the items, or indeed the validity of doing so. The current study uses several different statistical methods to develop measures of the psychosocial characteristics of jobs using these items. Consistent with previous research and theory, the results show that the twelve HILDA survey items reflect three key components of psychosocial job adversity: job demands and complexity, job control and job security. This factor structure was consistent across the seven waves of the survey data available for analysis. Based on the current findings, we plan to use the psychosocial job quality items to investigate the relationship between job adversity and physical and mental health over time.
We examined the impact of stressful job demands on employee attitudes and attendance. Using Karasek's (1979) theory of job decision latitude as the conceptual foundation, we hypothesized that mental and physical work demands would interact with employee beliefs of personal control. Survey data from 90 male manufacturing employees regarding their control beliefs were combined with objective job analysis data concerning mental and physical demands and one year's worth of archival data regarding unexcused absences, sick days, and days tardy. There were significant interactions between control and objective psychological demands that indicated that these demands were associated with higher levels of tardiness and sick days only under conditions of low perceived control. In contrast, subjective workload ratings showed no relationship with tardiness and sick days, but, in interaction with control, predicted work satisfaction and voluntary absence. We discussed these results in terms of a stress process that affects health-related attendance independent of employee attitudes.
The aim was to describe the prevalence of sickness presenteeism (SP) and to explore possible associations with work characteristics among Swedish police officers.
Questionnaire data from 11,793 police officers were analysed. Relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for SP were calculated with modified Poisson regression. SP was defined as having gone to work on two or more occasions during the past 12 months despite judging that one's health would have motivated sickness absence.
Of the police officers, 47% reported SP. All studied work environment factors were significantly associated with SP. The strongest association was found for stress (RR = 1.46; 95% CI: 1.41-1.52). Low support from colleagues and low control had higher impact on the risk estimates for SP among older subjects. Adjustment for self-rated health lowered the RRs, however, estimates remained statistically significant. The results indicated that SP was most affected by work environment among subjects with good self-rated health.
SP was high among police officers. Work environment factors seem to be associated with SP, particularly among subjects with good general health.
A literature review for the years 1984-2004 was performed to identify the determinants of the sick leave frequency and duration over that period and to establish the continuity in the character of those determinants.
The review referred to national and international studies on the determinants of the frequency and duration of sick leave.
The review presented a highly consistent picture of the factors determining sick leave frequency and duration.
Over the study period, the frequency and duration of sick leave were determined by a broad range of factors, a substantial number of which had a similar influence on both the study parameters.
To investigate associations between a wide variety of psychosocial work conditions and sickness absence in a medium-sized company.
Prospective cohort study of 395 employees working in an insurance office. Self-reported psychosocial work conditions were measured by questionnaire in January 2002 and linked to registered sickness absence in the period January 2002 to December 2004 adjusting for earlier sick leave and psychological distress.
The questionnaires of 244 employees were eligible for analysis. Decision authority and co-worker support were associated with sickness absence days, but their associations with sickness absence episodes were not significant. Role clarity was associated with the number of sickness absence days, but only with the number of short sickness absence episodes in women.
The wide variety of investigated psychosocial work conditions contributed little to the explanation of sickness absence in the medium-sized insurance office.
This paper comprises two parts: a theoretical part in which a number of theoretical and methodological recommendations about research on absence are made on the basis of a review of selected literature, and an empirical part that contains analyses of absence from work in the Danish slaughterhouse industry. In the theoretical part it is asserted that sickness absence cannot be understood if it is viewed as a simple function of ill health or other individual factors, such as job dissatisfaction. Absence should rather be regarded as a coping behaviour that reflects an individual's perception of his/her health (illness) and is a function of a number of factors at different levels, primarily the combination of job demands and coping possibilities at the job (job strain). Several ideal methodological requirements regarding absence research are formulated on this basis. The empirical part presents an analysis of absence from work in the Danish slaughterhouse industry based on a study of 4407 slaughterhouse workers. It is shown that a number of factors at the company level, the job level and the individual level are associated with an individual's absence from work over a 12-month period. It is further shown that people with high job strain have a significantly higher absence rate, that there is a clear association between sickness absence and perceived health and that absence is part of a pattern along with other coping strategies which are directed against stressing working conditions and perceived ill health. Lastly, it is discussed whether absence from work is a functional coping strategy.
We analyzed data from two national surveys to estimate the short-term work disability associated with thirty-day major depression. Depressed workers were found to have between 1.5 and 3.2 more short-term work-disability days in a thirty-day period than other workers had, with a salary-equivalent productivity loss averaging between $182 and $395. These workplace costs are nearly as large as the direct costs of successful depression treatment, which suggests that encouraging depressed workers to obtain treatment might be cost-effective for some employers.
Presenteeism, i.e. attending work while sick, is widespread and associated with significant costs. Still, economic analyses of this phenomenon are rare. In a theoretical model, we show that presenteeism arises due to differences between workers in the disutility from workplace attendance. As these differences are unobservable by employers, they set wages that incentivize sick workers to attend work. Using a large representative German data set, we test several hypotheses derived from our model. In line with our predictions, we find that stressful working conditions and bad health status are positively related to presenteeism. Better dismissal protection, captured by higher tenure, is associated with slightly fewer presenteeism days, whereas the role of productivity and skills is inconclusive.
Bullying in workplaces is a problem thought to harm individual productivity. This paper investigates whether being exposed to bullying in the workplace increases long-term sickness absence. We analyze employees from a selection of workplaces from The Bullying Cohort Study conducted in Denmark in 2006. The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised was used to avoid bias related to self-labeling as being bullied. We account for important confounders, such as historical information on sickness absence and mental health, obtained through rich registry data. Our results show that gender does not significantly explain exposure to bullying and that exposure to bullying is associated with negative immediate self-reported health for both genders. We also find, however, that only bullied females have higher, persistent increases in long-term sickness absence and adverse long-term health. This suggests that men and women have different coping strategies. We investigate plausible explanations for this and find that the differences cannot be explained by, for example, turnover or lack of employment. Although insignificant, our results nonetheless indicate that men are twice as likely to leave the labor force immediately after exposure to bullying.
Study objective:
To investigate the impact of changes in psychosocial work environment on subsequent sickness absence.
Design:
Analysis of questionnaire and sickness absence data collected in three time periods: 1990-1991, before the recession; 1993, worst slump during the recession; and 1993-1997, a period after changes.
Setting:
Raisio, a town in south western Finland, during and after a period of economic decline.
Participants:
530 municipal employees (138 men, 392 women) working during 1990-1997 who had no medically certified sick leaves in 1991. Mean length of follow up was 6.7 years.
Main results:
After adjustment for the pre-recession levels, the changes in the job characteristics of the workers during the recession predicted their subsequent sick leaves. Lowered job control caused a 1.30 (95% CI = 1.19, 1.41) times higher risk of sick leave than an increase in job control. The corresponding figures in relation to decreased social support and increased job demands were 1.30 (95% CI = 1.20, 1.41) and 1.10 (95% CI = 1.03, 1.17), respectively. In some cases there was an interaction with socioeconomic status, changes in the job characteristics being stronger predictors of sick leaves for employees with a high income than for the others. The highest risks of sick leave (ranging from 1.40 to 1.90) were associated with combined effects related to poor levels of and negative changes in job control, job demands and social support.
Conclusion:
Negative changes in psychosocial work environment have adverse effects on the health of employees. Those working in an unfavourable psychosocial environment before changes are at greatest risk.
Background: Work stress is a recognized risk factor for mental health disorders, but it is not known whether work stress is associated with the morbidity among individuals with psychologic distress. Another shortcoming in earlier research is related to common method bias-the use of individual perceptions of both work stress and psychologic distress. This prospective study was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), which identified psychologic distress as a predictor of sickness absence and the effect of work-unit measures of job strain on sickness absence among cases. Methods: Survey data were collected on work stress, indicated by high job strain, for a cohort of public sector employees (6663 women, 1323 men), aged 18 to 62 at baseline in 2000-2002, identified as GHQ-12 cases. Coworker assessments of job strain were used to control for bias due to response style. A 2-year follow-up included recorded long-term (> 7 days) medically certified sickness absence. Adjustments were made for age, socioeconomic position, baseline chronic physical disease, smoking, and heavy alcohol consumption. Results: Cases with psychologic distress had 1.3 to 1.4 times higher incidence of long-term sickness absence than noncases. Among cases, high job strain predicted sickness absence (hazard ratio 1.17 in women, 1.41 in men). The significant effect of job strain on sickness absence was found among workers in high socioeconomic positions (hazard ratio 1.54 for women, 1.58 for men) but not among employees in low socioeconomic positions (hazard ratio 1.06 for women, 1.31 for men). Conclusions: Psychologic distress has an independent effect on medically certified sickness absence. The identification of employees with high job strain and the improvement of their working conditions should be considered as an important target in the prevention of adverse consequences of psychologic distress.
Objectives:
Previous studies have consistently reported evidence of large significant associations between measures of psychological health and sickness absence. Some of this association, however, may be confounded by relevant covariates that have not been controlled. By using data with repeated observations from the same individuals, this study aimed to quantify the bias due to unobserved characteristics that are time invariant.
Methods:
Longitudinal data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey were used to estimate negative binomial regression models of the number of annual paid sickness absence days. Observations spanning the period 2005-2012, and covering all employed persons aged 15-64 years, were used (56 348 observations from 13 622 individuals).
Results:
Significant associations between the number of paid sickness absence days taken each year and scores on the mental health subscale of the SF-36 (MHI-5) were found. Inclusion of correlated random effects (which effectively control for unobserved person-specific factors that do not vary over time), however, resulted in a marked decline in the magnitude of this association. For persons with severe depressive symptoms (MHI-5 ≤52), the estimated incidence rate ratios were in the range 1.13-1.14 for men and 1.10-1.12 for women.
Conclusions:
Poor mental health is a risk factor affecting work attendance, but the magnitude of this effect, at least in a country where the rate of sickness absence is relatively low, is modest.
Men and women experience different kinds of mental health problems. While women exceed men in internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety, men exhibit more externalizing disorders such as substance abuse and antisocial behavior, which are problematic for others. These differences also vary by race and social class: for example, African Americans possess better mental health and, thus, a smaller gender gap in psychiatric problems. What explains these differences? We concentrate on conceptions of gender and gender practices. Research on gender and mental health suggests that conceptions of masculinity and femininity affect major risk factors for internalizing and externalizing problems, including the stressors men and women are exposed to, the coping strategies they use, the social relationships they engage in, and the personal resources and vulnerabilities they develop. This chapter investigates explanations in these areas for gender differences both in general and by race and class.
STUDY OBJECTIVE
To investigate the impact of changes in psychosocial work environment on subsequent sickness absence.
DESIGN
Analysis of questionnaire and sickness absence data collected in three time periods: 1990–1991, before the recession; 1993, worst slump during the recession; and 1993–1997, a period after changes.
SETTING
Raisio, a town in south western Finland, during and after a period of economic decline.
PARTICIPANTS
530 municipal employees (138 men, 392 women) working during 1990–1997 who had no medically certified sick leaves in 1991. Mean length of follow up was 6.7 years.
MAIN RESULTS
After adjustment for the pre-recession levels, the changes in the job characteristics of the workers during the recession predicted their subsequent sick leaves. Lowered job control caused a 1.30 (95% CI = 1.19, 1.41) times higher risk of sick leave than an increase in job control. The corresponding figures in relation to decreased social support and increased job demands were 1.30 (95% CI = 1.20, 1.41) and 1.10 (95% CI = 1.03, 1.17), respectively. In some cases there was an interaction with socioeconomic status, changes in the job characteristics being stronger predictors of sick leaves for employees with a high income than for the others. The highest risks of sick leave (ranging from 1.40 to 1.90) were associated with combined effects related to poor levels of and negative changes in job control, job demands and social support.
CONCLUSION
Negative changes in psychosocial work environment have adverse effects on the health of employees. Those working in an unfavourable psychosocial environment before changes are at greatest risk.
Sickness presenteeism, i.e. going to work while sick, can cause substantial productivity losses. Focusing on work-related characteristics, we investigate the determinants of the annual duration of sickness presenteeism using representative European cross-sectional data. We find work autonomy, workload, tenure, and the work environment to be the quantitatively most relevant determinants of sickness presenteeism days. Work autonomy (control over one's work, being supervisor), workload (weekly working hours, time pressure), and tenure are positively related to the number of sickness presenteeism days. In contrast, a good work environment (good working conditions and social support) comes along with fewer presenteeism days.
Purpose
The aim of this study was to investigate exposure to workplace bullying as a potential risk factor for sickness presenteeism (SP), i.e. working while ill.
Methods
This study is based on data collected through self-reported questionnaires in a 2-year prospective study on employees in Denmark. At baseline, 3363 employees (45.7 % response rate) answered to a questionnaire on their psychosocial work environment and health status. After 2 years, 1664 of the respondents also completed a follow-up questionnaire (49.5 % of the total baseline respondents). After excluding participants with missing values, the final samples were composed of 2865 and 1331 participants in the cross-sectional and prospective analyses, respectively.
Results
Modified poisson regression analyses showed that frequent (i.e. daily or weekly) exposure to workplace bullying was associated with reporting 8 or more days of SP in the preceding year in both the cross-sectional and the prospective analysis, also when controlling for several confounders including health-related variables. However, the prospective relationship became non-significant after adjustment for baseline SP.
Conclusion
This study provides indications of a significant relationship between exposure to frequent workplace bullying and SP, although causal connections could not be established. Methodological and theoretical considerations about study findings are provided, which could be of benefit to future studies examining the impact of being a target of workplace bullying on SP.
Sickness absence is associated with adverse health, organizational, and societal outcomes. Using data from a longitudinal cohort study of working Australians (the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey), we examined the relationship between changes in individuals' overall psychosocial job quality and variation in sickness absence. The outcome variables were paid sickness absence (yes/no) and number of days of paid sickness absence in the past year (2005-2012). The main exposure variable was psychosocial job quality, measured using a psychosocial job quality index (levels of job control, demands and complexity, insecurity, and perceptions of unfair pay). Analysis was conducted using longitudinal fixed-effects logistic regression models and negative binomial regression models. There was a dose-response relationship between the number of psychosocial job stressors reported by an individual and the odds of paid sickness absence (1 adversity: odds ratio (OR) = 1.26, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.09, 1.45 (P = 0.002); 2 adversities: OR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.51 (P = 0.002); ≥3 adversities: OR = 1.58, 95% CI: 1.29, 1.94 (P < 0.001)). The negative binomial regression models also indicated that respondents reported a greater number of days of sickness absence in response to worsening psychosocial job quality. These results suggest that workplace interventions aiming to improve the quality of work could help reduce sickness absence.
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Objective
This study aims at exploring the associations between psychosocial work factors and sickness absence.Methods
The sample from the French National Survey SUMER 2010 included 46,962 employees. Sickness absence spells and days within the last year were studied as two outcomes. Psychosocial work factors included psychological demands, decision latitude, social support, reward, working time, and workplace violence variables. Covariates were age, occupation, economic activity, and other occupational exposures.ResultsFor both genders, low latitude, low reward, shift work, bullying, and verbal abuse were risk factors of absence spells while long working hours were a protective factor. High demands, low support, and physical violence were risk factors for women. Low support and bullying for both genders, high demands for women, and low reward, long working hours, and physical violence for men increased absence duration.Conclusions
This study highlights the importance of psychosocial work factors as risk factors of sickness absence. Am. J. Ind. Med. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This study explores the societal expectations surrounding women's absenteeism from work by means of a content analysis of newspaper articles that have appeared in the New York Times over the last 100 years. The results suggest that a distinct absence culture exists for women that might legitimize their absenteeism, but might also perpetuate gender stereotypes and lead to gender discrimination.
Purpose
– Depression and other mental health disorders have a large impact on the quality of life and productivity of millions of individuals worldwide. For employers, mental health disorders are associated with increased health care costs as well as productivity losses in the form of absenteeism, short‐term disability absences and reduced on‐the‐job productivity‐known as presenteeism. The purpose of this paper is to review the association of worker productivity and mental health.
Design/methodology/approach
– This review summarizes the literature on the prevalence of mental health conditions among working adults, and the association between these disorders and productivity. Finally, the impact of interventions or workplace policies on the productivity of those suffering with mental health conditions is covered and recommendations for employers are suggested.
Findings
– Depressive disorders are relatively common in most workforces compared to other mental health conditions. The majority of studies on mental health and productivity have been conducted as part of nationwide surveys or in patient populations rather than worksites. The majority of studies show associations between mental health conditions and absenteeism (particularly short‐term disability absences). When presenteeism is measured by a validated questionnaire, results show that depression significantly impacts on‐the‐job productivity (presenteeism). Studies also indicate that the treatment expenditures for employees with depression may be offset by reductions in absenteeism, disability and on the job productivity losses.
Originality/value
– Workplace policies and benefits which support employees suffering with mental health disorders and provide access to evidenced‐based care adhering to best practice guidelines may improve the quality of life of employees and lead to reduced absenteeism, disability and lost productivity.
In the past it was assumed that work attendance equated to performance. It now appears that health-related loss of productivity can be traced equally to workers showing up at work as well as to workers choosing not to. Presenteeism in the workplace, showing up for work while sick, seems now more prevalent than absenteeism. These findings are forcing organizations to reconsider their approaches regarding regular work attendance. Given this, and echoing recommendations in the literature, this study seeks to identify the main behavioral correlates of presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace. Comparative analysis of the data from a representative sample of executives from the Public Service of Canada enables us to draw a unique picture of presenteeism and absenteeism with regards not only to the impacts of health disorders but also to the demographic, organizational, and individual factors involved. Results provide a better understanding of the similarities and differences between these phenomena, and more specifically, of the differentiated influence of certain variables. These findings provide food for thought and may pave the way to the development of new organizational measures designed to manage absenteeism without creating presenteeism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
A survey on attitudes toward nuclear war and disarmament is used to test two hypotheses: (1) the fundamentally different world orientations of males and females will be reflected in different factor structures for attitudes toward nuclear war and disarmament, and (2) males are more pro-force than females. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the first hypothesis. In addition, components of the separate factor structures for males and females were compared. Differences between the means for males and females on three factors extracted from the entire sample were used to test the second hypothesis. Both hypotheses were found to hold for the present sample. Interpretation of the differing factor structures for males and females is presented as well as implications for the more pro-force emphasis of males.
Presenteeism refers to attending work while ill. Although it is a subject of intense interest to scholars in occupational medicine, relatively few organizational scholars are familiar with the concept. This article traces the development of interest in presenteeism, considers its various conceptualizations, and explains how presenteeism is typically measured. Organizational and occupational correlates of attending work when ill are reviewed, as are medical correlates of resulting productivity loss. It is argued that presenteeism has important implications for organizational theory and practice, and a research agenda for organizational scholars is presented. Copyright copyright 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Organizational Behavior is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
In addition to the person-environment fit model (J. R. French, R. D. Caplan, & R. V. Harrison, 1982) and the demand-control model (R. A. Karasek & T. Theorell, 1990), a third theoretical concept is proposed to assess adverse health effects of stressful experience at work: the effort-reward imbalance model. The focus of this model is on reciprocity of exchange in occupational life where high-cost/low-gain conditions are considered particularly stressful. Variables measuring low reward in terms of low status control (e.g., lack of promotion prospects, job insecurity) in association with high extrinsic (e.g., work pressure) or intrinsic (personal coping pattern, e.g., high need for control) effort independently predict new cardiovascular events in a prospective study on blue-collar men. Furthermore, these variables partly explain prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension, atherogenic lipids) in 2 independent studies. Studying adverse health effects of high-effort/low-reward conditions seems well justified, especially in view of recent developments of the labor market.
This paper examines the role of job satisfaction in the determination of establishment-level productivity. The matched data contain both information on job satisfaction from the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) and information on establishment productivity from longitudinal register data that can be linked to the ECHP. The estimates for the effect of a one point increase in the establishment average level of employee job satisfaction, on a scale 1-6, on productivity vary depending on the specification of the model. The preferred estimate, based on the IV estimation that uses satisfaction with housing conditions as an instrument for job satisfaction, shows that the effect on value added per hours worked is ~20% in the manufacturing sector. The economic size of this effect is modest, because the observations are bunched towards the higher end of the satisfaction scale making it very difficult to increase the average level of job satisfaction in the establishment by one point.
To examine the predictors of sickness presenteeism in comparison with sickness absenteeism. The article focuses on the effects of working time match and efficiency demands and differentiates the estimates by a respondent's self-assessed health.
We use survey data covering 884 Finnish trade union members in 2009. We estimate logistic regression models. All models include control variables such as the sector of the economy and the type of contract.
Working time match between desired and actual weekly working hours reduces both sickness absence and presenteeism for those workers who have poor health. We also find that efficiency demands increase presenteeism for those workers who have good health.
The effects of working time match and efficiency demands on the prevalence of sickness absence and presenteeism are strongly conditional on a worker's self-assessed health level.
Background:
Lost productivity from attending work when unwell, or "presenteeism", is a largely hidden cost of mental disorders in the workplace. Sensitive measures are needed for clinical and policy applications, however there is no consensus on the optimal self-report measure to use. This paper examines the sensitivity of four alternative measures of presenteeism to depression and anxiety in an Australian employed cohort.
Methods:
A prospective single-group study in ten call centres examined the association of presenteeism (presenteeism days, inefficiency days, Work Limitations Questionnaire, Stanford Presenteeism Scale) with Patient Health Questionnaire depression and anxiety syndromes.
Results:
At baseline, all presenteeism measures were sensitive to differences between those with (N=69) and without (N=363) depression/anxiety. Only the Work Limitations Questionnaire consistently showed worse productivity as depression severity increased, and sensitivity to remission and onset of depression/anxiety over the 6-month follow-up (N=231). There was some evidence of individual depressive symptoms having a differential association with different types of job demands.
Limitations:
The study findings may not generalise to other occupational settings with different job demands. We were unable to compare responders with non-responders at baseline due to anonymity.
Conclusions:
In this community sample the Work Limitations Questionnaire offered additional sensitivity to depression severity, change over time, and individual symptoms. The comprehensive assessment of work performance offers significant advantages in demonstrating both the individual and economic burden of common mental disorders, and the potential gains from early intervention and treatment.
Mental ill-health results in substantial reductions in employee productivity (absenteeism and presenteeism). This paper examines the relationship between employee psychological distress, employee type and productivity.
Utilizing the Health and Performance at Work Questionnaire, in a sample of 60,556 full-time employees, the impact that psychological distress (Kessler 6) imposes on employee productivity by occupation type is examined.
Comparison of white-collar workers absenteeism rates by low and high psychological distress reveals no statistically significant difference. Nevertheless, the same comparison for blue-collar workers reveals that high psychological distress results in an 18% increase in absenteeism rates. High K6 score resulted in a presenteeism increase of 6% in both blue and white-collar employees.
The novel finding is that mental ill-health produces little to no absenteeism in white-collar workers yet a profound absenteeism increase in the blue-collar sector.
Work strain has been argued to be a significant cause of absenteeism in the popular and academic press. However, definitive evidence for associations between absenteeism and strain is currently lacking. A theory focused meta-analysis of 275 effects from 153 studies revealed positive but small associations between absenteeism and work strain, psychological illness, and physical illness. Structural equation modeling results suggested that the strain-absence connection may be mediated by psychological and physical symptoms. Little support was received for the purported volitional distinction between absence frequency and time lost absence measures on the basis of illness. Among the moderators examined, common measurement, midterm and stable sources of variance, and publication year received support.
Affect intensity (AI) may reconcile 2 seemingly paradoxical findings: Women report more negative affect than men but equal happiness as men. AI describes people's varying response intensity to identical emotional stimuli. A college sample of 66 women and 34 men was assessed on both positive and negative affect using 4 measurement methods: self-report, peer report, daily report, and memory performance. A principal-components analysis revealed an affect balance component and an AI component. Multimeasure affect balance and AI scores were created, and t tests were computed that showed women to be as happy as and more intense than men. Gender accounted for less than 1% of the variance in happiness but over 13% in AI. Thus, depression findings of more negative affect in women do not conflict with well-being findings of equal happiness across gender. Generally, women's more intense positive emotions balance their higher negative affect.