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.
Psychosocial factors at work, such as stress, job satisfaction, and social support, can significantly impact health. They can contribute to the causation and aggravation of diseases and affect the outcomes of curative and rehabilitative measures.
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.
Employees of different labor sectors are involved in different projects and pressed to deliver results in a specific period of time, which increases their mental workload. This increase can lead to a high mental workload, which in turn leads to a decline in job performance. Therefore, strategies for managing mental workload and promoting mental health have become necessary for corporate success. Evaluating Mental Workload for Improved Workplace Performance is a critical scholarly book that provides comprehensive research on mental workload and the effects, both adverse and positive, that it can have on employee populations as well as strategies for decreasing or deleting it from the labor sector. Highlighting an array of topics such as psychosocial factors, critical success factors (CSF), and technostress, this book is ideal for academicians, researchers, managers, ergonomists, engineers, industrial designers, industry practitioners, and students.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of safety and ergonomics in the workplace. From work-life balance and mental health to risk prevention, maintaining a healthy and happy workforce has become essential for the progress of every company. Moreover, ensuring inclusive spaces has become a pillar of business with some worrying that the diversity agenda will be overshadowed by the recent pandemic. It is imperative that current research is compiled that sheds light on the advancements being made in promoting diversity and wellbeing in the modern workforce. The Research Anthology on Changing Dynamics of Diversity and Safety in the Workforce is a comprehensive reference source that provides the latest emerging research on diversity management and initiatives as well as occupational health and safety practices in the workplace. These concepts are necessary for global workplaces to remain safe, efficient, and inclusive. Covering topics such as employee equity, human resources practices, and worker wellbeing, this anthology provides an excellent resource for researchers, human resources personnel, managers, safety officers, policymakers, CEOs, students, professors, and academicians.
Every year workers' low-back, hand, and arm problems lead to time away from jobs and reduce the nation's economic productivity. The connection of these problems to workplace activities-from carrying boxes to lifting patients to pounding computer keyboards-is the subject of major disagreements among workers, employers, advocacy groups, and researchers. Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace examines the scientific basis for connecting musculoskeletal disorders with the workplace, considering people, job tasks, and work environments. A multidisciplinary panel draws conclusions about the likelihood of causal links and the effectiveness of various intervention strategies. The panel also offers recommendations for what actions can be considered on the basis of current information and for closing information gaps. This book presents the latest information on the prevalence, incidence, and costs of musculoskeletal disorders and identifies factors that influence injury reporting. It reviews the broad scope of evidence: epidemiological studies of physical and psychosocial variables, basic biology, biomechanics, and physical and behavioral responses to stress. Given the magnitude of the problem-approximately 1 million people miss some work each year-and the current trends in workplace practices, this volume will be a must for advocates for workplace health, policy makers, employers, employees, medical professionals, engineers, lawyers, and labor officials.
This book is the first practical, hands-on guide that shows how leaders can build psychological safety in their organizations, creating an environment where employees feel included, fully engaged, and encouraged to contribute their best efforts and ideas. Fear has a profoundly negative impact on engagement, learning efficacy, productivity, and innovation, but until now there has been a lack of practical information on how to make employees feel safe about speaking up and contributing. Timothy Clark, a social scientist and an organizational consultant, provides a framework to move people through successive stages of psychological safety. The first stage is member safety-the team accepts you and grants you shared identity. Learner safety, the second stage, indicates that you feel safe to ask questions, experiment, and even make mistakes. Next is the third stage of contributor safety, where you feel comfortable participating as an active and full-fledged member of the team. Finally, the fourth stage of challenger safety allows you to take on the status quo without repercussion, reprisal, or the risk of tarnishing your personal standing and reputation. This is a blueprint for how any leader can build positive, supportive, and encouraging cultures in any setting.
This book provides a comprehensive, updated summary of research evidence on the effects of stressful working and employment conditions on workers’ health, as based on one of the worldwide leading theoretical models, effort-reward imbalance. It offers three innovative features that are appealing for research as well as for policy. Firstly, it presents and discusses comparable research findings from different continents, in particular from Japan, China, and Latin America. Secondly, it extends the conceptual framework of research on this topic by analysing associations of work stress with health in a life course perspective, and by linking these associations to the macro-level of national labour and social policies. Thirdly, the book helps to strengthen programs and policies that aim at promoting healthy work locally, nationally, and internationally, by providing solid facts on which such programs can be based.
Psychoneuroimmunology, Second Edition presents reports on the relationship between the nervous and immune systems. The book is divided into four sections. The first section details the role of neural structures and neurotransmitter signals in communication with the immune system. It documents the extensive neural connections with organs of the immune system; the dynamics of noradrenergic sympathetic innervation of spleen and thymus; and the evidence for immune signaling of the CNS. Part II elaborates the role of hormones in the modulation of immune functions; the basis for bidirectional communication between the neuroendocrine and immune systems; and the potential physiological implications of these neuroendocrine-immune system interactions. The third part addresses behavioral influences on immune response; the effects of conditioning, stress and social interactions in modulating immune responses; and the behavioral consequences of experimentally altered or genetically determined immunologic states. The final section presents the effects of psychosocial factors on immune responses and the potential impact of behavioral interventions in modulating immunity in healthy human subjects and in patients with AIDS. Neuroscientists, endocrinologists, and immunologists will find the book interesting.
