Occupational Health Science

Prior-Night Sleep Predicts Next-Day Sedentary Behavior as a Function of Work Duration in Public Safety Telecommunicators
Haynes PL, Pronio K, Callovini LC, Conger C, Hillier E, Fung C and Rojo-Wissar DM
Public safety telecommunicators are at significant risk for obesity and other health conditions, which can likely be attributed to high-intensity job functions that occur in seated positions for long work hours. However, the interactions between these variables, as well as the role of recovery sleep, remains underexplored. We hypothesized that work duration would moderate the daily relationship between prior-night sleep and next day sedentary behavior. To test this hypothesis, actigraphic estimates of sleep and activity were gathered in 47 public safety telecommunicators over an average of 11 days ( = 525 cases). Results indicated that participants spent more time sedentary when they had less efficient, prior-night sleep in combination with both longer shifts or longer-than-usual same-day shifts. Wake time after sleep onset and total sleep time were positively associated with more next-day sedentary behavior, but only when working fewer hours. These findings suggest that public safety telecommunicators engage in compensatory, behavioral sleep patterns that are consistent with chronic insomnia and affected by both cumulative and daily work duration. Taken together, these results provide strong proof-of-concept that sleep health promotion and insomnia intervention might decrease sedentary behavior.
A Framework for Protecting and Promoting Employee Mental Health through Supervisor Supportive Behaviors
Hammer LB, Dimoff J, Mohr CD and Allen SJ
The attention to workplace mental health is timely given extreme levels of burnout, anxiety, depression and trauma experienced by workers due to serious extraorganizational stressors - the COVID-19 pandemic, threats to climate change, and extreme social and political unrest. Workplace-based risk factors, such as high stress and low support, are contributing factors to poor mental health and suicidality (Choi, 2018; Milner et al., 2013, 2018), just as low levels of social connectedness and belonging are established risk factors for poor mental health (Joiner et al., 2009), suggesting that social support at work (e.g., from supervisors) may be a key approach to protecting and promoting employee mental health. Social connections provide numerous benefits for health outcomes and are as, or more, important to mortality as other well-known health behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption (Holt-Lundstad et al., 2015), and can serve as a resource or buffer against the deleterious effects of stress or strain on psychological health (Cohen & Wills, 1985). This manuscript provides an evidence-based framework for understanding how supervisor supportive behaviors can serve to protect employees against psychosocial workplace risk factors and promote social connection and belongingness protective factors related to employee mental health. We identify six theoretically-based Mental Health Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (MHSSB; i.e., emotional support, practical support, role modeling, reducing stigma, warning sign recognition, warning sign response) that can be enacted and used by supervisors and managers to protect and promote the mental health of employees. A brief overview of mental health, mental disorders, and workplace mental health is provided. This is followed by the theoretical grounding and introduction of MHSSB. Suggestions for future research and practice follow, all with the focus of developing a better understanding of the role of supervisors in protecting and promoting employee mental health in the workplace.
AN EVALUATION OF INDOOR SEX WORKERS' PSYCHOSOCIAL OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY IN METRO VANCOUVER, CANADA
Machat S, McBride B, Murphy A, Mo M, Goldenberg S and Krüsi A
Criminalization of sex work is linked to increased risk of violence and lack of workplace protections for sex workers. Most jurisdictions globally prohibit some or all aspects of sex work with New Zealand constituting a notable exception, where sex work has been decriminalized and regulated via OHS guidelines. We used the as an analytical framework to examine the lived-experiences of psychosocial OHS conditions of indoor sex workers in Metro Vancouver under end-demand criminalization. We drew on 47 semi-structured interviews, conducted in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese in 2017-2018, with indoor sex workers and third parties providing services for them. Participants' narratives were analyzed using a coding framework based on the NZ Guide's psychosocial factors section, including safety and security from violence and complaints processes, which highlighted specific OHS shortcomings in the context of end-demand sex work legislation in indoor sex work environments. Participants identified a significant lack of OHS support, including a lack of safety training, right to refuse services, and access to justice in the context of labour rights violations or fraud, robbery or violence. Our findings emphasize the benefits of full decriminalization of sex work to facilitate sex workers' access to OHS through development and implementation of OHS guidelines designed by and for the indoor sex industry. OHS guidelines should focus on labour rights and protections, including development of sex workers' right to refuse services and access to justice.
Navigating a Context of Severe Uncertainty: The Effect of Industry Unsafety Signals on Employee Well-being During the COVID-19 Crisis
LeNoble C, Naranjo A, Shoss M and Horan K
Complex disaster situations like the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) create macro-level contexts of severe uncertainty that disrupt industries across the globe in unprecedented ways. While occupational health research has made important advances in understanding the effects of occupational stressors on employee well-being, there is a need to better understand the employee well-being implications of severe uncertainty stemming from macro-level disruption. We draw from the Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress (GUTS) to explain how a context of severe uncertainty can create signals of economic and health unsafety at the industry level, leading to emotional exhaustion through paths of economic and health anxiety. We integrate recent disaster scholarship that classifies COVID-19 as a transboundary disaster and use this interdisciplinary perspective to explain how COVID-19 created a context of severe uncertainty from which these effects unfold. To test our proposed model, we pair objective industry data with time-lagged quantitative and qualitative survey responses from 212 employees across industries collected during the height of the initial COVID-19 response in the United States. Structural equation modeling results indicate a significant indirect effect of industry COVID-19 unsafety signals on emotional exhaustion through the health, but not economic, unsafety path. Qualitative analyses provide further insights into these dynamics. Theoretical and practical implications for employee well-being in a context of severe uncertainty are discussed.
Faculty Time Expenditure Across Research, Teaching, and Service: Do Gender Differences Persist?
Allen TD, Miller MH, French KA, Kim E and Centeno G
Faculty members are continually confronted with a multitude of activities among which they must divide their time. Prior research suggests that while men and women academics spend the same number of weekly hours working, women tend to expend more time on teaching and service relative to men while men expend more time on research relative to women. Based on cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 783 tenured or tenure-track faculty members from multiple universities, we examine gender differences in time spent in research, teaching, and university service. Regression analyses show that gender differences in time allocation continue to persist after controlling for work and family factors. More specifically, women report more time on teaching and university service than do men, while men report more time spent on research than do women. Results provide evidence that gendered differences in faculty time allocation are robust across time. Potential implications for policy are discussed.
Pandemic-Induced Telework Challenges and Strategies
Greer TW, Payne SC and Thompson RJ
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, telework was an established discretionary practice with a considerable amount of research. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced people who had never worked from home before to do so. Our two-wave descriptive investigation provides a historical snapshot of what approximately 400 teleworkers experienced in the first two to three months of the pandemic. We explored how this experience differed for those who had previously teleworked, those who had children in their home, and those who had supervisory responsibilities. The data exposed telework challenges and pandemic-specific challenges. The results support job crafting theories that teleworkers proactively implement strategies to adjust their boundaries and relationships to meet their need (Biron et al., , 2022). The data also revealed that employees were still struggling two months later, despite implementing strategies like self-care, taking breaks, and psychological reframing. This research provides detailed evidence of how pandemic-induced telework is not the same as traditional telework and some initial evidence of the pandemic-induced telework adjustment time period.
The Role of Wellness Climate in Small Business Health Promotion and Employee Wellbeing
Reynolds GS and Bennett JB
Wellness involves physical, emotional, behavioral, social, and spiritual dimensions. A climate for wellness exists at both the psychological and organizational levels, consisting of individual and shared perceptions of policies, structures, and managerial behavior that support or promote employee wellbeing. This study explored the associations between psychological and organizational wellness climate and the effectiveness of a team health promotion training on employees' perceived physical and mental wellbeing and substance use. Employees from 45 small businesses completed self-report measures of wellness climate, wellbeing, positive unwinding behavior, work-family conflict, job stress, drug use, and alcohol use, assessed before, and one and six months after, attending either of two types of onsite health promotion training. Team Awareness training targeted improvements in the social climate at work. Healthy Choices training targeted individual health behavior. A control group did not receive training until after the study. Businesses were randomly assigned to conditions and data were analyzed using multi-level modeling. Models that included wellness climate as a mediator fit the data significantly better than models without climate as a mediator. Team Awareness participants showed greater improvements in wellness climate and wellbeing compared to the control group. Healthy Choices participants showed no changes in climate and no mediation effects of climate. Health promotion efforts may be enhanced by including wellness climate as a target in program design at multiple levels.
Intersection of Intimate Partner Violence, Partner Interference, and Family Supportive Supervision on Victims' Work Withdrawal
Isola C, Granger S, Turner N, LeBlanc MM and Barling J
This study investigates the link between intimate partner violence (IPV) and work withdrawal (including absence frequency, partial absenteeism, and turnover intentions) in the context of partners' interference with victims at work and family supportive supervision of victims at work. Using the work-home resources model, we propose that (1) partner interference with victims at work will worsen the relationship between IPV and work withdrawal, and (2) family supportive supervision of victims at work will alleviate this relationship. Our analysis of a sample of 249 female employees found a three-way interaction between IPV, partner interference, and family supportive supervision on victims' absence frequency: IPV victims whose partners interfered with their work had lower absence frequency when they received high (compared to low) levels of family supportive supervision at work. Importantly, family supportive supervision was only related to lower absence frequency when both IPV and partner interference were present. This suggests that organizations have a unique opportunity to reduce the negative effects of IPV and partner interference not only for the victim but also for other employees who are indirectly affected. Our findings have significant implications for organizations, which have ethical, legal, and practical responsibilities to create a safe working environment for all employees.
Relative Importance of Incivility and Loneliness in Occupational Health Outcomes
Gilmer DO, Magley VJ, Dugan AG, Namazi S and Cherniack MG
Researchers have studied loneliness as a modern health epidemic which is associated with myriad negative health effects, yet the literature lacks evidence of loneliness' correlates, including incivility, in the workplace. This paper not only replicates previous work on incivility, a pervasive interpersonal workplace stressor, it also contributes novel findings on the relative importance of loneliness in explaining variance in occupational health outcomes. We tested hypotheses using two cross-sectional datasets containing data from the general working population (Sample 1) and state corrections supervisors (Sample 2). Through relative importance analyses, including relative weights analysis, we found that both general and workplace loneliness explain substantial variance in several outcomes (e.g., emotional exhaustion, depression symptoms, and turnover intentions) relative to the variance explained by workplace incivility. When controlling for perceived work stress, general loneliness appears to be more important than incivility in explaining variance in emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and depression symptoms.
"It's Been a Game Changer": Examining Treadmill Desk Use When Working from Home
Scisco JL, Meyers E, Miceli A and Powell J
Previous research has established the physical and mental benefits of using active workstations like treadmill desks in the workplace, such as reducing sedentary behavior and improving mood. However, treadmill desk use when working at home has not been examined despite significant increases in working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (1) to be the first to describe how treadmill desks are used when working from home and (2) to describe perceived benefits, motivators, and barriers for treadmill desk use when working from home. Twenty participants who worked from home and used a treadmill desk were interviewed between February 2022 and April 2022. Participants reported using their treadmill desks while completing a variety of work and non-work tasks and experienced physical, mental, social, and work-related perceived benefits. Motivators for use included desires to reduce prolonged sitting and be more active, wanting to be healthier and fitter, tracking and reaching goals like daily step counts, feeling good during use, and to overcome increased sedentary behavior due to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Barriers to use included the type of work being done, physical limitations, accessibility issues, social concerns, and mental barriers. Future research should investigate ways to increase treadmill desk use at home by capitalizing on motivating factors and reducing barriers to use.
Live-streaming Activity and Relaxation Breaks: a (Home-)Office-Compatible Approach to Promote Break Recovery, Mood, and Attention?
Riedl EM, Müller A, Perzl J and Thomas J
The aim of this study is to investigate whether short, live-streaming activity and relaxation lunch breaks have positive associations with office workers' mood (calmness, valence, and energetic arousal), back pain, and attention after break and whether these associations are mediated by better break recovery. Additionally, we considered the two respite interventions as resources possibly buffering the effects of elevated situational job demands. Ten-minute break exercises were conducted during lunch breaks via Zoom live-stream, and data on those days were compared with data on days on which participants spent their breaks as usual. Our sample of 34 office workers provided data for 277 work days (209 in the home office and 68 on site at the company). Multilevel path models revealed positive total associations of both respite interventions with the mood dimension of calmness. Activity breaks additionally showed a positive association with the energetic arousal dimension of mood, while relaxation breaks were positively related to objectively measured cognitive performance. Interestingly, activity breaks moderated the relationships of job demands with calmness and valence, indicating their function as a stress-buffering resource. There were no significant associations between the two respite interventions and back pain. Supplemented by participants' feedback, the findings of this study suggest that offering short virtually guided break exercises may represent a feasible and office-compatible approach to promote break recovery, mood and functionality at work, especially regarding home-office work. Possible advantages and disadvantages of the live-streaming format are discussed.
Workplace Supported Recovery from Substance Use Disorders: Defining the Construct, Developing a Model, and Proposing an Agenda for Future Research
Frone MR, Casey Chosewood L, Osborne JC and Howard JJ
Substance use disorders (SUDs) represent a critical public and occupational health issue. Therefore, understanding the process of SUD recovery has become an issue of growing importance among substance use and recovery professionals. Nonetheless, despite the acknowledged importance of employment for SUD recovery, little conceptual or empirical work exists on how the workplace might support or undermine SUD recovery. In this article, we address this limitation in several ways. First, to promote a better understanding of SUD recovery for occupational health researchers, we provide a brief overview of the nature of a SUD, prior definitions of SUD recovery, and general themes associated with the recovery process. Second, we develop a working definition of . Third, we present a heuristic conceptual model showing how the workplace might impact the SUD recovery process. Fourth, using this model and research from the substance use and occupational health literatures, we develop a series of general research propositions. These propositions highlight broad directions requiring more detailed conceptualization and empirical research to understand better how work conditions may support or undermine the process of employee SUD recovery. Our overarching goal is to motivate innovative conceptualization and research on workplace supported recovery from SUDs. Such research may inform the development and evaluation of workplace interventions and policies supporting SUD recovery and highlight the benefits of workplace supported SUD recovery for employees, employers, and communities. Research on this issue may allow occupational health researchers to impact a significant societal and occupational health issue.
Ethnic Differences in Context: Does Emotional Conflict Mediate the Effects of Both Team- and Individual-Level Ethnic Diversity on Emotional Strain?
Kößler FJ, Fujishiro K, Veit S and Hoppe A
Work teams are becoming increasingly heterogeneous with respect to their team members' ethnic backgrounds. Two lines of research examine ethnic diversity in work teams: The compositional approach views team-level ethnic heterogeneity as a team characteristic, and relational demography views individual-level ethnic dissimilarity as an individual member's relation to their team. This study compares and contrasts team-level ethnic heterogeneity and individual-level ethnic dissimilarity regarding their effects on impaired well-being (i.e., emotional strain) via team- and individual-level emotional conflict. Fifty teams of retail chain salespeople ( = 602) participated in our survey at two points of measurement. Based on the ethnic background of team members, we calculated team-level ethnic heterogeneity that applied to all members, and individual-level ethnic dissimilarity within the team that varied according to each member's ethnic background. Multilevel path modeling showed that high levels of team-level ethnic heterogeneity were related to high levels of emotional strain via team-level emotional conflict. However, the opposite was found for individual-level ethnic dissimilarity. We discussed this difference by contextualizing individual-level ethnic dissimilarity in the team-level heterogeneity and social status of ethnic groups in society at large. Our findings suggest that the social status of the ethnic group to which team members belong may impact how ethnic diversity relates to team processes and well-being.
Perceived Work Ability: A Constant Comparative Analysis of Workers' Perspectives
McGonagle AK, Bardwell T, Flinchum J and Kavanagh K
Perceived work ability, or one's perceived ability to continue working in their current job, is important to understand in order to inform efforts to retain talent and promote worker well-being. The current study offers a unique contribution by taking an inductive approach, giving participants voice to describe their own work ability experiences. Participants ( = 301) who were working at least 30 h a week in the U.S. and reported one or more hindrances to work ability responded to four open-ended questions about hindrances to work ability, individual strategies for maintaining work ability, and employer supports for maintaining work ability. Using constant comparative analysis, we corroborated existing work ability research and theory, along with unique contributions that enhance our understanding of perceived work ability. Notably, non-work demands, such as family obligations and lack of financial resources are under-examined, yet emerged as important work ability hindrances in this study. We also uncovered several personal strategies to help maintain WA (e.g., maintaining health and using work strategies to optimize functionality) that are dependent upon available job resources (e.g., support, autonomy, and flexibility). Ultimately, job resources of support, job control, and flexibility emerged as the most powerful leverage points for organizations to help workers maintain WA. Findings suggest that future efforts to support workers' work ability should include these resources.
An Alpha, Beta and Gamma Approach to Evaluating Occupational Health Organizational Interventions: Learning from the Measurement of Work-Family Conflict Change
Livingston BA, Pichler S, Kossek EE, Thompson RJ and Bodner T
Given the rapid growth of intervention research in the occupational health sciences and related fields (e.g. work-family), we propose that occupational health scientists adopt an "alpha, beta, gamma" change approach when evaluating intervention efficacy. Interventions can affect absolute change in constructs directly (alpha change), changes in the scales used to assess change (beta change) or redefinitions of the construct itself (gamma change). Researchers should consider the extent to which they expect their intervention to affect each type of change and select evaluation approaches accordingly. We illustrate this approach using change data from groups of IT professionals and health care workers participating in the STAR intervention, designed by the Work Family Health Network. STAR was created to effect change in employee work-family conflict via supervisor family-supportive behaviors and schedule control. We hypothesize that it will affect change via all three change approaches-gamma, beta, and alpha. Using assessment techniques from measurement equivalence approaches, we find results consistent with some gamma and beta change in the IT company due to the intervention; our results suggest that not accounting for such change could affect the evaluation of alpha change. We demonstrate that using a tripartite model of change can help researchers more clearly specify intervention change targets and processes. This will enable the assessment of change in a way that has stronger fidelity between the theories used and the outcomes of interest. Our research has implications for how to assess change using a broader change framework, which employs measurement equivalence approaches in order to advance the design and deployment of more effective interventions in occupational settings.
Applying Psychological Contract Theory to Link Customer Sexual Harassment to Work and Health-Related Outcomes
Morganson VJ
Service workers often endure sexual harassment from customers in the course of performing their work duties. This article includes two studies based upon psychological contract theory. Customer sexual harassment (CSH) is posited as a psychological contract breach, which predicts an affective response (i.e., psychological contract violation), and in turn, work and health-related outcomes. Both studies tested models using samples of customer service women from various professions. Using path analysis, Study 1 found support for the proposed model, finding significant indirect effects between CSH and emotional exhaustion and affective commitment via psychological contract violation. Study 2 expanded upon the results, finding additional evidence of mediation for burnout (emotional exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy), affective commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. This study adds to growing research highlighting the health and work-related costs of allowing CSH to persist. Results support the application of theory and raise concerns that organizations may be viewed as complicit in CSH, which in turn, is linked with health and job-related outcomes. Examining contract violation, a subjective appraisal of the organization, serves as a contribution to sexual harassment literature, which has focused on appraisal of the harassment itself and has not directly followed from theory. Future research could examine specifics regarding how harassment experiences might impact organizational perceptions via psychological contract theory. Drawing upon CSH and psychological contract literatures, approaches to prevention and intervention are discussed.
When Thoughts Have No Off Switch: The Cost of Telepressure and Message-based Communication behaviour within Boundary-crossing Contexts
Cambier R and Vlerick P
Communication technology enables employees to be constantly connected at the cost of potentially blurring the boundaries between work and private life, which can be detrimental to their well-being. The present study utilised a quantitative diary approach ( = 269 employees,  = 1256 data points) to provide further evidence on the association between telepressure and ruminative thoughts within boundary-crossing contexts (i.e., including work-related behaviour and cognitions during leisure time as well as private-related behaviour and cognitions at work). On a day-to-day level, we examined if context-incongruent telepressure had a positive effect on context-incongruent affective rumination through context-incongruent message-based communication behaviour. Multilevel analyses supported our hypothesised mediation models. Altogether, findings reveal that quickly replying towards messages or its related cognition (i.e., telepressure) may result in a resource-draining experience in terms of affective rumination within both boundary-crossing contexts. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are discussed.
Creating Clarity and Crew Courage: Preventive and Promotive Measures for a Maritime Industry Without Bullying and Harassment
Boström M and Österman C
Seafaring shares many characteristics with contemporary working life ashore. However, a major difference is that seafarers can spend up to 12 months aboard a ship that constitutes a work, living and recreational environment. Onboard work includes many stressors that can potentially contribute to workplace bullying and harassment, which in turn can affect safety critical operations. The aim of this study was to identify underlying causes in the organizational and social work environment that can cause workplace bullying and harassment at sea, and to suggest appropriate preventive and promotive strategies and measures. Data were collected mainly through World Café workshops with 56 participants from the Swedish maritime industry. Seafarer occupational health, safety, and wellbeing is largely determined by interdependent factors at micro, meso, and macro levels, where different stakeholders play various roles. Strategies and measures starting at the individual seafarer, and gradually expanding outwards toward the maritime industry are suggested. It is important that a victim of bullying or harassment receives adequate support. Creating crew courage enables employees to both recognize troubling situations and know how to act and respond to a situation. To bridge the gap between policy and practice, the legislative framework needs translating into practical procedures to make sense to the middle manager at the sharp end, with limited knowledge, time, resources, and decision latitude. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of work environment interventions - what works, for whom, and under which circumstances.
Isolated and Stressed? Examining the Effects of Management Communication in Alleviating Mental Health Symptoms during COVID-19
Sawhney G, Jimenez-Gomez C, Cook P and Albert KM
The goal of this research was to assess the role of professional isolation on mental health symptoms via stress among employees working remotely due to COVID-19. Additionally, this research explored the interactive effect of management communication on the relationship between professional isolation and stress, and stress and mental health symptoms. In Study 1, behavior analysts who were working remotely as a result of the pandemic completed assessments of professional isolation, stress, and mental health symptoms at two points in time, separated by two weeks. Study 2 replicated and extended the findings from Study 1 in a sample of remote employees recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk using a three-wave design. Findings of both Study 1 and Study 2 suggested that stress mediated the relationship between professional isolation and mental health symptoms. Additionally, management communication buffered the association between stress and mental health symptoms in Study 2. Lastly, the indirect effect of professional isolation on mental health symptoms was stronger for those who received less communication from their management. The findings of these two studies expand our understanding of the mechanism and boundary condition through which professional isolation is related to mental health symptoms.
I Can Afford to Relax: Relating Perceived Income Adequacy to Recovery and Health
Black KJ, DePhillips OC and Britt TW
Employee recovery during non-work hours benefits health in a variety of areas. However, little research has evaluated how recovery may be affected by perceptions of income (in)adequacy. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships among workers' perceived income adequacy (PIA), relaxation remorse, recovery experiences outside of work, and health outcomes. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling with data obtained from a two-wave, time-lagged survey of Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers ( = 683). We found a positive relationship between PIA and recovery, which were both related to better health. PIA was negatively related to relaxation remorse, with relaxation remorse being associated with poor health. There was evidence of indirect relationships via relaxation remorse, where relaxation remorse explained portions of the relationships between PIA and health symptoms. Indirect relationships via recovery experiences were largely unsupported. Our findings expand our understanding of employee recovery as it relates to perceptions of income. Specifically, our studies highlight that one's perceived income adequacy may be an important contributor to comfort with and/or actual experienced recovery, which can have further health effects.
"Are We Working (Too) Comfortably?": Understanding the Nature of and Factors Associated with Sedentary Behaviour When Working in the Home Environment
Niven A, Baker G, Almeida EC, Fawkner SG, Jepson R, Manner J, Morton S, Nightingale G, Sivaramakrishnan D and Fitzsimons C
Home working has increased due to COVID-19, but little is known about how this change has impacted the health risk behaviour of elevated sedentary time. The aim of this cross-sectional exploratory study was to assess occupational sitting behaviour when working at home, and use the Capability Opportunity Motivation-Behaviour (COM-B) model to identify influences on this behaviour. University staff (n = 267; 69% female; 92% white) who were predominantly working from home completed a questionnaire to assess sitting time, sitting breaks, demographic and occupational characteristics, and a 7-item COM-B questionnaire and open-ended questions to assess influences on time spent sitting whilst working from home. Data were analysed descriptively, a repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine differences in the COM-B items, and binary logistic regression was used to examine predictors of sitting time. Staff spent on average 89.5% (SD = 17.1) of their time sitting whilst working at home, and took an average of 1.36 (1.38) sitting breaks per hour. There were significant and meaningful differences in the influence of the COM factors on ability and willingness to reduce sitting behaviour (p < .0001; η  = .38), and the open-ended responses added further context. The included variables accounted for 20.7% of variance in sitting behaviour, with age, sitting breaks, motivation-automatic, and opportunity-physical contributing significantly. Working from home leads to elevated levels of sitting, and the COM-B provides a useful model to identify key influences on ability and willingness to reduce sitting. Strategies incorporating regular breaks, habit formation/reversal, and restructuring the physical environment may be beneficial.
Worrying About Finances During COVID-19: Resiliency Enhances the Effect of Worrying on Both Proactive Behavior and Stress
Fa-Kaji NM, Silver ER, Hebl MR, King DD, King EB, Corrington A and Bilotta I
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic instability, many people are contending with financial insecurity. Guided by Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, American Psychologist 44:513-524, 1989; Hobfoll et al., Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 5:103-128, 2018), the current research explores the consequences of experiencing financial insecurity during a pandemic, with a focus on individuals who report relatively higher rates of financial insecurity, performance challenges, and stress during such experiences: working parents (American Psychological Association, 2022). This research also examines the role that personal resources, in the form of trait resiliency, play in the relationships between financial insecurity and behavioral and psychological outcomes including worrying, proactive behaviors, and stress. In a study of 636 working parents and their children, we find that financial insecurity heightens worrying, underscoring the threatening nature of the loss or anticipated loss of material resources. Worrying, in turn, promotes proactive behaviors at work-an effect that is more pronounced among high-resiliency individuals. However, worrying is also associated with elevated stress among high-resiliency individuals, providing support for a trait activation perspective (rather than buffering hypotheses) on ongoing, uncontrollable adversities. Taken together, our results help to (1) illuminate the impact of financial insecurity on work and well-being, (2) reveal a mechanism (i.e., worrying) that helps explain the links between financial insecurity and work and personal outcomes, and (3) expand our knowledge of the implications trait resiliency has for both psychological and behavioral reactions to ongoing crises.
Dysfunctional Social Support: Delivering Social Support at Work in an Unappreciative Way
Semmer NK, Kälin W, Amstad FT, Tschan F, Jacobshagen N, Beehr TA, Lehmann M and Elfering A
Self-esteem, both personal and social, constitutes a core concern for many people. Accordingly, Stress-as-Offense-to-Self theory focuses on threats, as well as boosts, to the self as important topics in occupational health science. Workplace social support is well established as a resource that signals acceptance and appreciation. At the same time, however, social support, notably support actually received, as opposed to perceived support availability, has been shown to have the potential to "backfire" and act as a stressor rather than a resource. The current study emphasizes the potential of social support to constitute a threat to the self if not delivered appropriately, that is, if it contains derogatory messages, even minor ones. The " " () focuses on such threats entailed in supportive attempts, focusing on provider behavior rather than recipient reactions and covering a broader range of (mostly subtle) derogatory behaviors than previously existing measures. In a cross-sectional study of 468 Swiss employees, it was associated with strain and attitudes in a way that characterizes it as a stressor. Effects were not strong, but dysfunctional support explained variance over and above demographic characteristics, neuroticism, classical social stressors, task stressors, and functional social support, as well as the outcome variables from a previous wave of measurement. The  therefore constitutes a valuable complement to existing measures. Although further research on this issue is needed, results underscore the need to sensitize employees and supervisors about pitfalls of support that is well intended but delivered in a potentially offending way.
The Dobbs Decision and the Future of Occupational Health in the US
Bergman ME, Gaskins VA, Allen T, Cheung HK, Hebl M, King EB, Sinclair RR, Siuta RL, Wolfe C and Zelin AI
Access to abortion care has a profound impact on women's ability to participate in the workforce. In the US, restrictions on abortion care have waxed and waned over the years, including periods when abortion was broadly permitted across the nation for most pregnant people for a substantial proportion of pregnancy and times when restrictions varied across states, including states where abortion is banned for nearly all reasons. Additionally, access to abortion care has always been a reproductive justice issue, with some people more able to access this care than others even when it is structurally available. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court handed down the , returning to states the ability to determine restrictions on abortion, including near-total bans on abortion. In this anthology, ten experts share their perspectives on what the Dobbs decision means for the future, how it will exacerbate existing, well-researched issues, and likely also create new challenges needing investigation. Some contributions are focused on research directions, some focus on implications for organizations, and most include both. All contributions share relevant occupational health literature and describe the effects of the Dobbs decision in context.
Precarious Work Schedules and Sleep: A Study of Unionized Full-Time Workers
Dugan AG, Decker RE, Zhang Y, Lombardi CM, Garza JL, Laguerre RA, Suleiman AO, Namazi S and Cavallari JM
Unlike which is temporary and insecure, with inadequate pay, benefits, and legal protections, can affect workers with permanent full-time jobs in sectors where employment has historically been secure, well-compensated, and even unionized. Precarious work schedules - characterized by long shifts, non-daytime hours, intensity and unsocial work hours - are increasingly prevalent. Relations between precarious work schedules and poor health are not well understood, and less is known about how to attenuate this relation. We examined the indirect effects of precarious work schedules on fatigue and depressive symptoms through sleep quantity. Two moderators - schedule flexibility and sleep quality - were examined as buffers of these associations. Workers from the Departments of Correction and Transportation in a northeast state ( = 222) took surveys and reported on demographics, work schedule characteristics, schedule flexibility, sleep quality and quantity, fatigue, and depressive symptoms. Results revealed that precarious work schedules had indirect effects on fatigue and depressive symptoms through sleep quantity. Schedule flexibility moderated the relation between precarious work schedules and sleep quantity, such that workers with greater schedule flexibility had more hours of sleep. Sleep quality moderated the association between sleep quantity and fatigue and depressive symptoms, such that workers reported greater fatigue and depressive symptoms when they had poorer sleep quality. Findings have direct applicability for developing initiatives that enhance Total Worker Health through individual and organizational changes.
Fear and Trembling While Working in a Pandemic: an Exploratory Meta-Analysis of Workers' COVID-19 Distress
Jimenez WP, Katz IM and Liguori EA
The global COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of workers and taken its toll on health and well-being. In line with recent calls for more inductive and abductive occupational health science research, we exploratorily meta-analyzed workers' COVID-19 distress, defined as psychological and psychosomatic strain contextualized to experiencing the virus and pandemic broadly. We identified many existing COVID-19 distress measures (e.g., Fear of COVID-19 Scale by Ahorsu et al., , 2020; Coronavirus Anxiety Scale by Lee, (7), 393-401, 2020a) and correlates, including demographic variables (viz., gender, marital status, whether worker has children), positive well-being (e.g., quality of life, perceived social support, resilience), negative well-being (e.g., anxiety, depression, sleep problems), and work-related variables (e.g., job satisfaction, burnout, task performance). Additionally, we found preliminary evidence of subgroup differences by COVID-19 distress measure and country-level moderation moderators (viz., cultural values, pandemic-related government response) as well as COVID-19 distress's incremental validity over and above anxiety and depression. The findings-based on  = 135 independent samples totaling  = 61,470 workers-were abductively contextualized with existing theories and previous research. We also call for future research to address the grand challenge of working during the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately develop a cumulative occupational health psychology of pandemics.
"Your help isn't helping me!" Unhelpful workplace social support, strain, and the role of individual differences
Hughes IM, Freier LM and Barratt CL
While the reception of social support at work is generally considered a net positive for employees, researchers have identified that particular kinds of social support, such as unhelpful workplace social support (UWSS), tend to evoke stress and contribute to strain for recipients. Although (Gray et al. , (4), 359-385, 2020), when validating the novel UWSS measure, uncovered relations between UWSS and various outcomes, more research is needed to further understand the impacts of UWSS. Furthermore, the extant social support literature is currently lacking in its understanding of how individual differences strengthen or weaken the relations such support has with strain. Drawing from the Theory of Stress as Offense to Self (Semmer et al. , (3), 205-238. 10.1007/s41542-019-00041-5, 2019), we, through two studies (  = 203,  = 277), further explore the relations of UWSS, focusing on behavioral and psychological strain, and examine how these relations are influenced by relevant individual differences (e.g., Big Five traits). Results from our first study replicate key findings from (Gray et al. , (4), 359-385, 2020), providing additional validity evidence for the novel measure of UWSS, and demonstrate that UWSS is related to various types of behavioral strain. Our second study shows that the strength of these deleterious relations varies based on characteristics of the recipient of UWSS. Altogether, the present research contributes to the literature on social support as a stressor by elucidating further the effects of UWSS, and, perhaps more importantly, for whom UWSS is particularly deleterious.
Chronic Health Conditions in the Workplace: Work Stressors and Supportive Supervision, Work Design, and Programs
McGonagle AK, Chosewood LC, Hartley TA, Newman LS, Ray T and Rosemberg MA
A large and growing number of workers are managing chronic physical and mental health conditions while working, necessitating attention from both researchers and leaders and practitioners in organizations. Much of the current discourse around research and practice in this area is focused on prevention of chronic disease and rehabilitation of disability to help workers return to work. Less commonly attended to are workplace factors that can support the quality of working life and the longevity of working life for workers with chronic health conditions. This Special Issue contains a set of interdisciplinary articles examining common stressors for workers with chronic health conditions, including work-health conflict, anticipated stigma, and job insecurity. It also contains articles examining important supportive relational and social and motivational work design factors, including supervisor support, psychosocial safety climate (shared perceptions of work policies, practices, and procedures that are meant to protect worker psychological health and safety), sense of community, organizational fairness, and health-related leeway (freedom available to workers to self-regulate work activities while self-managing day-to-day symptom fluctuations). The focal populations in this set of articles include, broadly, workers with various types of chronic health conditions, and more specifically, workers with mental health conditions, workers with diabetes, and breast cancer survivors. We hope this Special Issue sparks additional interest in these important topics and others that are critical to supporting workers with chronic health conditions in organizations.
Keeping Up With Work Email After Hours and Employee Wellbeing: Examining Relationships During and Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Tedone AM
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to work from home (WFH) and more heavily rely on technology to conduct work, calling for further empirical investigation into the effects of work-related technology and the WFH environment on employee wellbeing. This study investigates the relationship between work-related email (WRE) use during nonwork hours and emotional exhaustion in a sample of U.S. employees required to WFH during the pandemic, with results suggesting that psychological detachment and work-family conflict (WFC) play important roles in this relationship. Furthermore, telepressure (i.e., the preoccupation/urge to promptly respond to WRE) moderated the relationship between WRE use and psychological detachment, which offers insight into the psychological processes behind WRE use after hours. Direct and indirect effects between WRE use and emotional exhaustion were also compared to effects generated using data from an independent sample of pre-pandemic in-office employees to determine whether the pandemic context has amplified the observed relationships. Results show that all direct/indirect effects, except for the effect of WRE use after hours on psychological detachment, were stronger in those required to WFH. These findings shed light onto the similarities and differences between the current and pre-pandemic work landscapes and have important implications for lawmakers, organizational leaders, and employees.
Crafting for Health: A Longitudinal Study of Job and Off-Job Crafting Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Morstatt AI, Bauer GF, de Bloom J, Roman ZJ, Tušl M and Kerksieck P
We examined the association between changes in employee job and off-job crafting and their self-rated health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, we investigated how these associations differed across sample subgroups, contrasting differences in work location, living situation, and contractual changes (short-time work). We used four waves of a longitudinal dataset surveying N = 783 German-speaking employees from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria from 2019 to 2021. We applied latent change score modeling and multigroup analyses to investigate our research questions. Results indicated that the mean job and off-job crafting and self-rated health trajectories remained relatively stable. However, we observed significant interindividual variance in job and off-job crafting changes. We found a consistent small positive relationship between crafting changes in both life domains over time, indicating that employees tended to change their crafting efforts similarly across domains. Additionally, job crafting increases between Waves 1 and 2 were linked to higher subsequent self-rated health at Wave 2, and similarly, off-job crafting increases between Waves 3 and 4 were linked to higher self-rated health at Wave 4. We observed only minor differences in this pattern across subgroups. Our results show how adaptive changes in crafting are linked to broader interindividual health differences and help identify groups who are not able to increase crafting during crises and thus could benefit from targeted support. Crafting can be an effective individual strategy for maintaining health, complementing organizational and public health measures. We encourage future research to incorporate temporal and contextual phenomena into crafting research.