Psychosocial Factors At Work

This book presents research and best practice examples from the Asia Pacific region to address the gap in global expertise on psychosocial factors at work. It explores practices in the region that promote healthy workplaces and workers by presenting research from around the globe on issues such as telework, small and medium-sized enterprises, disaster-struck areas, suicide prevention, and workplace client violence. It discusses practical, multidisciplinary efforts to address worker occupational health. Further, it explores psychosocial risk and prevention, as well as the significant role of cultural variations and practices in the diverse range of countries covered.

A multidisciplinary effort to determine the extent to which psychosocial factors peculiar to different occupational environments can influence the health of workers and managers. Wide-ranging in its approach, the book uses a diversity of research findings and conceptual models to explore the links between specific forms of occupational stress and the physical and mental well-being of employees. Attention is also given to the impact that work-related stress can have on performance levels, rates of absenteeism, alcohol abuse, employee turnover and accidents on the job.

Today’s evolving world of work makes it imperative for employers to manage psychosocial hazards (PSH) and risks leading to work-related stress. This book contains essential, general, and country-specific information and templates for the successful management of hazards to prevent psychological harm in the workplace. Acknowledged as global issues affecting all workers and industries, PSH are work factors that have the potential to lead to physical or psychological injury and stress, relating to how work is designed, organized, and managed, and to work relationships and interactions. This book advances the idea that management of PSH, and psychological health and safety, is part of the duty of care of today’s responsible and ethical employers to employees, and that U.S. employers should recognize this responsibility. Clear and easy to follow, this guide presents comprehensive information on addressing PSH, discussing measures taken internationally (laws, guidance, and resources from Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan), and a new global standard on psychological health and safety at work. (Note: At times within this book, and Part II in particular, punctuation may be added to quoted provisions for ease of reading and for consistency.) Practitioners and students in the fields of management, occupational health and safety, human resource management, ethics and compliance, occupational health psychology, and organizational psychology will come away with a deeper understanding of the importance of PSH and their management.

The past several decades of rapid organizational change and global economic activity beseech a fresh understanding of work conditions and mental health across all nations and regions. This volume addresses psychosocial factors at work, legislation, frameworks, research innovations and common perceptions in the Asia Pacific countries. It presents new research on psychosocial factors at work from an Asia Pacific perspective, introducing exciting new research on workaholism, bullying, work-life balance and conflict, work demands classifications, and psychosocial safety climate. Insights regarding workplace psychosocial factors, worker health and well-being have evolved mainly within North American and European cultural contexts and developed industrial countries. This state of the art account of knowledge development in the Asia Pacific region will stimulate new insights for researchers and policy makers to improve the quality of workers’ lives worldwide. "This very informative book highlights the significance and uniqueness of job stress problems encountered by workers of different countries in the Asia Pacific region. Occupational health researchers all around the world will find this book a great inspiration for future research." Yawen Cheng, ScD, Institute of Health Policy and Management, Taiwan “Initiatives and interventions reported from collaborative projects present useful hints for filling gaps in policies and practices for managing psychosocial risk factors in diverse work-life situations in the Asia Pacific region”. Dr. Kazutaka Kogi, President, International Commission of Occupational Health

This book is a valuable, comprehensive and unique reference text on Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), a new work stress theory. It proposes a new PSC theory concerning the corporate climate for workers’ psychological health, its origins and implications for work stress, and provides a critique of current research and theories. It provides a comprehensive review of all PSC studies to date. The chapters discuss state-of-the-art empirical evidence testing PSC theory in relation to management roles, organisational resilience, corruption, organisational status, cultural perspectives, illegitimate tasks, high PSC work groups, PSC variability in work groups, etc. They investigate outcomes such as psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, depression, worry, engagement, health, cognitive decline, personal initiative, boredom, cynicism, sickness absence, and productivity loss, in various workplace settings across many countries. This unique book allows practitioners to rapidly update practical measures, benchmarks and processes, and provides students and trainees with an introduction to PSC and important concepts and methods, quantitative and qualitative, in occupational health with leads to further sources. Students as well as experts on occupational health and safety, human resource management, occupational health psychology, organisational psychology and practitioners, unions and policy makers will find this book highly informative. It covers relevant materials for undergraduate and postgraduate education, drawing upon the concepts, topics and methods (diary, multilevel, longitudinal, qualitative, data linkage) within the multidisciplinary occupational health area.

This Research Report (RR) is the third product from the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) Call Centre studies. The first product of the HSL research was HELA Local Authority Circular (LAC 94/1) published in November 1999. The LAC reported the findings of HSL's exploratory and qualitative (interview and discussion-based) research on call centres. The second product of HSL's call centre research was a significantly revised and updated version of the HELA Local Authority Circular (LAC 94/1 (rev)), which was published in December 2001. In this RR, we report findings from the larger scale quantitative (questionnaire-based) study. as a call handler more stressful than working in other jobs?; 2. Is working as a call handler equally stressful for everyone who works as one?; 3. What is it that makes working as a call handler stressful?; and 4. What can be done to reduce the psychosocial risks associated with working as a call handler? Future research papers and articles in practitioner publications will report further results and conclusions from this research.