Psychosocial Safety Climate as a Factor in Organisational Resilience: Implications for Worker Psychological Health, Resilience, and Engagement
Organisations are undergoing unprecedented changes in order to survive in a global and fiercely competitive capitalist market. Resilience is the capacity to endure challenges and is an attribute highly sought after in organisations, but is a construct typically theorised at the individual level. We argue that the notion of resilience can be applied at a systems level to the organisational context, and that organisational resilience presages individual resilience. Organisational resilience is defined as the capacity of the organization to cope with challenges through flexible, adaptable, humane, and interactive systems, whilst maintaining the health, individual resilience, and engagement of …
Predicting new major depression symptoms from long working hours, psychosocial safety climate and work engagement: a population-based cohort study
ObjectivesThis study sought to assess the association between long working hours, psychosocial safety climate (PSC), work engagement (WE) and new major depression symptoms emerging over the next 12 months. PSC is the work climate supporting workplace psychological health.SettingAustralian prospective cohort population data from the states of New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia.ParticipantsAt Time 1, there were 3921 respondents in the sample. Self-employed, casual temporary, unclassified, those with working hours <35 (37% of 2850) and participants with major depression symptoms at Time 1 (6.7% of 1782) were removed. The final sample was a population-based cohort of 1084…
Psychosocial Safety Climate and PSC Ideal; Direct and Interaction Effects on JD-R for Mental Health, Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement (Iran)
In this chapter the PSC model is investigated from composition and dispersion perspectives. PSC refers to the shared perception of managerial activities to support employees’ psychological health and safety. Theoretically, PSC extends the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) theory. Consistent with composition and dispersion theories, both PSC compositions (average levels) and PSC dispersion (standard deviation (SD)) are investigated. PSC Ideal \( \left( {\frac{PSC\;Level}{PSC\, SD}} \right) \) is a new concept being introduced for the first time here, and includes both mean and dispersion roles. We expected that PSC at the team level determined job design (JD-Rs; psychological and emotional demands…
Psychosocial safety climate: Conceptual distinctiveness and effect on job demands and worker psychological health
Abstract Psychosocial safety climate is an emerging construct that refers to shared perceptions regarding policies, practices, and procedures for the protection of worker psychological health and safety. The purpose of the research was to: (1) demonstrate that psychosocial safety climate is a construct distinct from related climate measures (i.e., physical safety climate, team psychological safety, and perceived organizational support); and (2) test the proposition that organizational psychosocial safety climate determines work conditions (i.e., job demands) and subsequently worker psychological health. We used samples from two different cultures; an Australian sample (N = 126 workers in 16…
Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and enacted PSC for workplace bullying and psychological health problem reduction
Bullying at work has profound effects on both the individual and organization. We aimed to determine if organizational psychosocial safety climate (PSC; a climate specific to worker psychological health) could reduce workplace bullying and associated psychological health problems (i.e., distress, emotional exhaustion, depression) if specific procedures were implemented (PSC enactment). We theorized that the PSC enactment mechanism works via psychosocial processes such as bullying mistreatment climate (anti-bullying procedures), work design (procedures reduce stress through work redesign), and conflict resolution (procedures to resolve conflict). We used two-wave national longitudinal interv…
Increasing the probability of finding an interaction in work stress research: A two-wave longitudinal test of the triple-match principle
Research into work stress has attempted to identify job resources that can moderate the effects of job demands on strain. The recently developed triple-match principle (TMP) proposes that job demands, resources, and strain can be conceptualized as being composed of cognitive, emotional, and physical dimensions. When a psychological imbalance is induced by job demands, individuals activate corresponding resources to reduce the effects of the demands. A closer match occurs when the resources are processed in the same psychological domain as the demands. The further away from a match, the less likely an interactive effect will become. Put simply, the likelihood of finding an interactive effect…
PSC; Current Status and Implications for Future Research
The present chapter reviews all previous chapters of this book. Overall, the chapters offered many new perspectives on PSC research and practice. The validity and usefulness of the PSC concept was applied in Malaysia, Australia, and Iran, and for the first time in Canada and Germany, and in occupations (humanitarian work, university personnel) not investigated previously. This has been demonstrated in a series of qualitative studies (Biron et al., 2019, Chap. 15; Ertel & Formazin, 2019, Chap. 13; Loh et al., 2019, Chap. 9; Potter et al., 2019, Chap. 10). Several chapters introduced new conceptual or measurement related ideas, including the PSC as part of the broader concept of organisationa…
On the positive aspects of customers: Customer-initiated support and affective crossover in employee-customer dyads
This study examines psychological resources for service employees and their customers, which enhance the service experiences of both parties during service conversations. We investigate whether customer behaviour (customer-initiated support) positively impacts on employees' affect. We also examine the crossover of employees' affect on customers' affect. State positive affect (PA) was assessed in 82 employees of car dealerships and 421 customers on 2 occasions (before and after the conversation). Multi-level analyses showed the hypothesized positive impact of customer behaviour on employees' PA and in turn of employees' PA on customers' PA. Results are integrated in an overall process model …
Translating cross-lagged effects into incidence rates and risk ratios: The case of psychosocial safety climate and depression
Longitudinal studies are the gold standard of empirical work and stress research whenever experiments are not plausible. Frequently, scales are used to assess risk factors and their consequences, and cross-lagged effects are estimated to determine possible risks. Methods to translate cross-lagged effects into risk ratios to facilitate risk assessment do not yet exist, which creates a divide between psychological and epidemiological work stress research. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate how cross-lagged effects can be used to assess the risk ratio of different levels of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) in organisations, an important psychosocial risk for the development of dep…
Psychosocial Safety Climate: A New Work Stress Theory and Implications for Method
This book responds to a public health priority (Whiteford et al., 2013) and a call from the WHO (2016), ILO (2016) and OECD (2012) to prevent and manage mental ill-health and promote health and well-being by drawing attention to the connection between work and mental health. By demonstrating a link between work factors and mental health-related issues, this book will provide public policy makers with evidence needed to shift policy attention to create mentally healthy workplaces and move investment of health, compensation, and insurance funding into proactive prevention strategies rather than costly treatments, medications, therapy, and hospitalisation. Ensuring workplaces globally have the…
Psychosocial safety climate as a lead indicator of workplace bullying and harassment, job resources, psychological health and employee engagement
Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is defined as shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices and procedures for the protection of worker psychological health and safety, that stem largely from management practices. PSC theory extends the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework and proposes that organizational level PSC determines work conditions and subsequently, psychological health problems and work engagement. Our sample was derived from the Australian Workplace Barometer project and comprised 30 organizations, and 220 employees. As expected, hierarchical linear modeling showed that organizational PSC was negatively associated with workplace bullying and harassment (demands) a…