Category Archives: Wellness

Thinking About Downsizing? Read This First!

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Topic: Wellness, Work Environment
Publication: Human Resource Management (JAN 2011)
Article: The effects of downsizing on labor productivity, the value of showing consideration for employees’ morale and welfare in high-performance work systems
Authors: R.D. Iverson, C.D. Zatzick
Reviewed By: Rebecca Eckart

As economic conditions weaken, downsizing has become an increased reality for many organizations. Typically aimed at decreasing operational costs, often downsizing has the unintended consequence of also lowering employee productivity and morale.

To harness costs and increase efficiency, an increasing number of organizations are adopting High -Performance Work Systems (HPWS).These are typically defined by multiple separate but interconnected human resource practices aimed at increasing employee commitment, skills, and productivity. Examples include such practices as selective hiring, information sharing, job design, employee participation, and HR planning. HPWS center on encouraging and motivating employees to use their enhanced skills and knowledge to increase individual productivity and thus aid in the accomplishment of organizational goals.

HPWS are often a significantly large resource and cost expense for organizations, leading researchers to investigate HPWS in the context of downsizing. Iverson and Zatzick (2011) report that organizations with HPWS have lower levels of productivity following downsizing, but this relationship is more pronounced for those that give little consideration to employees’ morale and well-being during the process.

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Go Ahead, Take That Vacation – It’s Good For You…and Your Company!

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Topic: Burnout, Wellness, Work-Life Balance
Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior (JAN 2011)
Article: How long do you benefit from vacation? A closer look at the fade-out of vacation effects
Authors: J. Kuhnel and S. Sonnentag
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

We all look forward to vacations and other extended breaks from our hectic work schedules, and fortunately, the case is building for the importance of these hiatuses from work.  Research suggests that because normal work demands drain our limited physical and mental resources, employees need sufficient time to recharge their batteries if they are to operate at full capacity on the job. 

Research by Kuhnel and Sonnentag (2011) shows that vacation time can positively impact employees’ psychological well-being when they return to the job.  In their study of German teachers, vacation time was favorably related to work engagement and burnout after returning to work.  In other words, after returning from vacation, teachers tended to report high levels of work engagement and low levels of burnout.  The benefits of vacation time, however, dropped off after about one month back on the job.

But why exactly do the benefits of vacations wear off over time?  The authors found that job demands (e.g., student behavior problems, time pressures in this particular study) counteract the positive benefits of vacation time over time.  Said another way, while vacations help us recharge our batteries, job demands begin to take their toll and drain our limited resources after some time back on the job.  However, the authors found that experiencing leisure time following vacation helps preserve the positive effects of vacation on employee well-being.

Results such as these highlight the importance of taking vacation time. 

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When Mental Detachment from Work is a Must

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Topic: Stress, Wellness, Work-Life Balance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (AUG 2010)
Article: Staying well and engaged when demands are high: The role of psychological detachment
Authors: S. Sonnentag, C. Binnewies, and E.J. Mojza
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

When we’re faced with high job demands at work, stress and emotional burnout often lurk right around the corner.  Regardless of the potentially harmful effects of high job demands, they’re a reality for many of us.  But before we  throw up our  hands in surrender when work piles up,  there are buffers against the dreaded consequences of excessive job demands.  One such buffer is known as psychological detachment, which is a fancy term for “leaving work at work” and devoting mental resources to non-work-related things while not on the clock. 

In a recent study, Sonnentag et al. (2010) explored how psychological detachment helps employees stay healthy and engaged over time when job demands are high.  The findings suggest that employees who do not detach themselves from work during non-work times experience increased emotional burnout over time (one year later in the study).  High job demands also have detrimental effects on employees’ physical health and work engagement, but only for those who do not psychologically detach themselves from work.  For employees who do “leave work at work”, high job demands do NOT appear to lead to lower work engagement, increased physical health issues or increased burnout.  

Sonnentag et al.’s study reminds us that preoccupying ourselves with work during our off time (e.g., evenings, weekends, vacations) can lead to health issues and lower work engagement. 

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Heavy Workloads: Much More Than Just a Nuisance

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Topic: Stress, Wellness, Work Environment
Publication: Personnel Psychology (Summer 2010)
Article: Psychological and physiological reactions to high workloads: Implications for well-being
Authors: R. Ilies, N. Dimotakis, and I.E. De Pater
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

In a rather unique study by Ilies, Dimotakis and De Pater (2010), the authors found that heavy workloads can have negative psychological (distress) and physiological (blood pressure) effects that fluctuate depending on an employee’s daily workload.  The authors also investigated how daily changes in workload affect employees’ daily well-being when they get home from work.

Ilies et al. employed a sample of 64 technical, clerical and administrative employees at a large U.S. university. Employees were given PDAs and an apparatus to measure their blood pressure at several time points throughout the day for a period of two weeks.  On days in which employees reported having higher workloads, they also experienced higher levels of distress at work and had higher blood pressure readings. Higher workloads were also associated with lower perceptions of well-being at the end of the work day.

The good news is that the unfavorable effects of workload tend to be much less dramatic for employees who perceive that they have more control over their work and employees who perceive that their organization values their contributions (i.e., perceived organizational support).

On the other hand, heavy workloads seem to have a very serious effect on employees who have little control over their work and feel that the organization does not value their work.

One important implication of Ilies et al.’s findings is that workload may ultimately lead to very serious psychological and physical health issues in the long run (e.g., increased blood pressure can lead to cardiovascular disease).  While it seems that our workloads continue to increase over time, organizations should note that the greater degree of control employees have over their work and the degree to which their employees feel that they support them and value their contributions seems to diminish the negative effects of heavy workloads.

Ilies, R., Dimotakis, N., & De Pater, I.E. (2010). Psychological and physiological reactions to high workloads: Implications for well-being. Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 407-436.

The Unemployment Blues may be More Serious than You Think!

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Topic: Unemployment, Wellness
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior
Article: Unemployment impairs mental health: Meta-analyses.
Author: K.I. Paul, K. Moser

Featured by: Benjamin Granger 

Unemployment Does unemployment CAUSE poor mental
health?  After all, isn’t it
possible that poor mental health can cause unemployment?  Seriously, what employer wants to hire
a distressed, anxious, depressed employee with low self-esteem?

In an attempt to arrive at a firm
conclusion about whether unemployment actually causes changes in mental health,
Paul and Moser (2009) report on the results of two meta-analyses that included
237 cross-sectional studies as well as 87 longitudinal studies. In addition to
their primary goal of uncovering the causal link between unemployment and
mental health, the researchers also investigated a number of factors that might
affect unemployment’s role in predicting mental health.

Overall, Paul and Moser’s results suggest
that unemployement does indeed have a negative influence on mental health
outcomes (e.g., symptoms of distress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem).  If this seems obvious, Paul and Moser
also uncovered several factors that make some individuals more prone to poor
mental health during unemployment. 
For example, the negative effects of unemployment were greater for men
than for women, greater for blue collar workers than white collar workers, and
greater for the long-term unemployed than the short-term unemployed.

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The Researcher’s Advantage to Chilled-Out Survey Participants

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Topic: Stress, Wellness
Publication: Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology 
Article: Too stressed out to participate Examining the relation between stressors and survey response behavior.     
Blogger: LitDigger

Relax If you’re in the kind of work I’m in, your projects thrive off of
survey response rates.  Yes, that
is only one element to a successful
organizational study, BUT CLEARLY response rates are a big deal to research! 

You probably have read some articles on how to boost your survey
response rate (e.g., is handing out free candy or instilling guilt ACTUALLY
effective to your cause?), but a recent article by Barr, Spitzmüller, and
Stuebing (2008) takes a new perspective. 
Instead of investigating the effectiveness of methods like initiating
reciprocity or offering cash rewards, these researchers examined the impact of job stress on the likelihood that survey recipients
would go ahead and complete the surveys.

There are many reasons why any given survey recipient may NOT
complete a survey.  Some
consciously choose not to respond (referred to in the study as “active non-respondents”)
while others may instead get distracted by something else (maybe they’re in the
middle of trying to make a quickly approaching deadline) and just so happen to
not respond (the study refers to these people as “passive non-respondents”).  Note: look into Rogelberg, et al.
(2003) for more information on the difference between “passive” and “active”
non-respondents. 

What types of stress did they study?  Role stress.  The different role stressors they
measured were role overload (having
too much to do in too little time – yes, we can ALL relate to that), role conflict (having incompatible job demands,
so it’s impossible to make everyone happy), and role ambiguity (not being entirely sure what is or isn’t your
responsibility).

So, let’s get to it already: Is STRESS one reason why people may
not respond to a survey?  Barr et
al. conducted their 2008 study to find out.

As the researchers had anticipated, more overloaded respondents
were less likely to respond to surveys (this showed for both active and passive non-respondents). 
Not surprising.  The role
conflict measure of stress did not show a significant relationship to
unresponsive behavior. 

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Managing Grief in the Workplace

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Topic: Emotional Intelligence, Wellness
Publication: Academy of Management 
Article:  Grief and the workplace. 
Blogger: Benjamin Granger

Sad man

To shed light on the issue
of grief in the workplace, Mary Ann Hazen (2008) provided several suggestions
for how managers and organizations can effectively respond to grieving
employees.  

Several suggestions provided
by Hazen (2008) are presented below.

Managers can:

(1)  First, acknowledge that an employee is grieving (this
seems simple, but it can have a major impact on the griever).

(2)  Make themselves available to listen to the griever if
he/she needs to talk (this communicates compassion and caring and may lead to
less strain on the part of the employee).

(3)  Recognize and make themselves aware of the common
responses of grievers (e.g., understand how people typically respond as they
move through stages of grief).

Organizations can:

(1)  Support and encourage the managerial behaviors listed
above (managers cannot be effective without organizational support).

(2)  Provide opportunities for employees and managers to
learn about the grieving process (provide courses, workshops, referrals and/or
employee assistance programs).

(3)  And MOST IMPORTANTLY, recognize that although
employee grief can hurt the organization as a whole (e.g., lost productivity),
it’s not all just about dollars and cents!  Most successful organizations maintain “a sense of moral
purpose, extra-organizational support, and excellent leadership” (p. 84), and
this contributes to the emotional, psychological, and physical well-being of
their employees.

Doing what Simon Says Regarding Safety

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Topic: Stress, Wellness, Work Environments
Publication: Journal of Business Ethics
Article: Ethical climates and workplace safety behaviors: an empirical investigation.
Blogger: LitDigger

Cmon you can trust me How do you know that you won’t trip on
the telephone cord your coworker has stretched across the entryway of your
cubicle?  You don’t (until the
inevitable happens).  How do you
know whether or not workplace safety behaviors are actually practiced in your
organization?  A study by
Parboteeah and Kapp (2008) says that the company’s ethical climate may provide
some clues.

Although the link between safety and
ethical climate hasn’t been examined to a great extent in previous literature,
Parboteeah and Kapp found some evidence suggesting this link may exist.  The authors measured three different
types of ethical climate: egoist (Edgar acts ethically because he knows it’s in
his self-interest to do so), benevolent (Brittany acts ethically for the sake
of the common good), and principled (Pete acts ethically because of the laws,
rules, or professional codes surrounding him).

So which type of ethical climate did the
authors find to be associated with workplace safety?  Of our three exemplified employees, we can aim our laser
pointer on Pete.  Workplaces with
stronger principled climates were
more likely to have lower injury rates and higher safety-enhancing behaviors
than workplaces with weaker principled climates.

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Oh give me a BREAK!

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Topic: Emotional Intelligence, Job Performance, Wellness
Publication: Academy of Management Journal
Article: Making the
break count: An episodic examination of recovery activities, emotional
experiences, and positive affect displays 

Blogger: LitDigger

Balance Do your
customer service employees do work-like activities during their breaks or maybe
even not take their breaks at all? 
If you care about their ability to ‘put on the happy face’ for
customers, then research by Trougakos, Beal, Green & Weiss (2008) says that
breaks are important.  For those of you
do-it-all-and-never-stop types out there, preparing for other work activities
and running errands do not count as breaks.  Real breaks are activities that don’t take much effort, like
socializing or relaxing.

The authors
found that service employees who took real breaks during their work day
were more likely to experience positive emotions, less likely to experience
negative emotions, and – get this – more likely to display higher amounts of
positive affect (e.g., smiling at
customers).  Um, yeah, that’s
customer service performance right there.

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Coffee Break, Anyone?

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Topic: Wellness
Publication: Monitor on Psychology 
Article: Caffeine’s wake-up call.
Blogger: Larry Martinez

Coffee Break We all have that one person in the office who just can’t function properly until they’ve had their cup of coffee in the morning (maybe it’s you).  And who doesn’t get a boost out of a candy bar and soda around mid-afternoon?  A short article in the APA Monitor synthesized some of the most relevant research on America’s favorite and most widely accepted drug:  caffeine. 

Issue 1:  Is there a placebo effect for caffeine? 

Well, like almost any other psychological question, the answer is “it depends.”  Forty-five minutes after participants received caffeinated coffee but thought they were given decaf, they reported more physiological withdrawal symptoms than every other group in this classic placebo experimental design (got/didn’t get caffeine, thought they got caffeine/thought they got decaf)..…  That is, if they expected they would feel sluggish and tired, they reported that way.  However, after a couple of hours, the placebo effect wore off.  So, from a physiological point of view, placebo effects only work in the short term.  You can’t fool your body for long though; it’ll soon realize what’s up and respond accordingly. 

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