AS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES GET DISCUSSED MORE, IT’S PART OF A HEALTH CHECK-IN AT THE WORKSITE. SARAH DAVIES-ROBERTSON AND DR. FARHAN SHAHZAD LOOK AT WAYS YOU CAN CHECK IN AT WORK.

Once upon a time, mental health at work was overlooked. We often ignored issues in the workplace, seeing a person as weak and unable to cope with the demands placed upon them. Nowadays, we are much more sympathetic. We understand that work can cause all kinds of illnesses due to stress. There are musculoskeletal disorders due to lack of ergonomics; burnout and brownout due to stress; and anxiety and depression due to lack of compatibility with your job. That said, organisations can be the source of stress, but individual employees are multifaceted and complex. Perhaps an employee is predisposed to a psychiatric disorder, or maybe they even have one already. Workplaces cannot always be the source of blame, but if a person already has a diagnosis of a mental health disorder, then it is imperative that they are treated with kindness and supported through their journey. Treating someone with a mental health disorder requires knowledge, just as we do with those with physical health problems. A psychiatric disorder may look invisible, it’s not as obvious as physical illness, but it, nevertheless, requires care and compassion. So, how can organisations help those with mental health problems? Firstly, they can learn to identify what they are. Then, they can work with individuals to tailor a support plan. Just as you would give someone time off who had chemotherapy appointments, you would also need to give a person time to visit their therapist. Working with each employee on an individual basis is key.

What can organisations do to promote staff well-being?

It is imperative for organisations to understand the individual nature of each employee. Each worker brings a unique life history, their own psychological make-up, characteristics and traits to the workplace, and therefore needs to be treated as such. Treating staff as individuals is key to harnessing their talents. In organisational psychological research, we see that employees are multifaceted individuals. And while it is not expected that each manager will be a master psychologist when working with their subordinates, generating psychological and self-awareness is a must. Treating everyone the same is where many managers fall short. Building rapport and providing ongoing support to employees is a mediating factor in safeguarding against stress and burnout. Furthermore, organisations can promote wellbeing by establishing a healthy routine. Encouraging employees to take their lunch away from their desks will be a welcoming break that boosts overall productivity. It’s also important that, wherever possible, employees leave on time. Workers have responsibilities outside of the office, so they must attend to these needs. Neglecting family and social affairs can breed resentment and disengagement at work. Encouraging staff to take their holiday time, leave when they should and take regular breaks will boost their overall productivity at work. Finally, employers must actively focus on reducing the organisational factors contributing to occupational stress and burnout. Office bullying, scapegoating, bureaucracy and politics cause unnecessary work stress. Organisations can do well to listen to their staff’s needs and create an opendoor policy where employees can readily express their worries candidly. Tackling structural level stressors should be a priority for organisations – not least because it is the organisation that will suffer most if not.

How does this impact tradies?

The physical aspect of being a tradesperson is often overlooked. Manual labour and physical stress can cause chronic disorders that lead to psychological stress. Back pain, for instance, is an active stressor that comes with a psychological cost. If you are experiencing pain, get it checked out so that it does not lead to a chronic backache. If you are waking up at night and worried about the days ahead, speak to your GP for a possible referral. Low mood, anxiety and stress can be helped and the sooner you speak to someone, the better. While it can be difficult to speak out about unfair treatment, there are options if you’re being harassed and bullied at work. Consider making a complaint to human resources or speaking to FairWork Australia about any organisational issues. Remember, you are never alone and speaking up can help save your mental health.

Download Now

A number of researchers have accounted for the role of an employee’s personality in their response to stress. This is known as individual differences, which essentially accounts for the unique characteristics an individual has, with potential consequences to how they interact with their environment.

While occupational stressors and job characteristics may have an impact on employee wellbeing, not all employees will react to these stressors in the same way, if at all. The Person-Environment Fit (French and Caplan, 1972) encompasses individual differences and asserts that it is the individual’s interaction with their environment that causes stress in the way that Parkes (1994) argues that the relationship between the individual and the organisation as factors that contribute to stress is non-invariant. Thus, the definition of stress here is subjective and it is the individual’s perception of the stress as a threat that causes psychological strain.

According to the Person-Environment Fit, stress, as a result of work overload, is because the employee does not have the capabilities to manage their workload, while acknowledging that others may be able to manage that level of work with ease. While capabilities are factors that should be accounted for, employee stress is more complex than merely the level of work an individual can manage. Stress arises because the individual perceives it to exceed the amount of coping resources they have. Subjective feelings of overload can give rise to stress, especially if the stress surpasses what the individual believes they can cope with. Individual differences account for the subjective nature of occupational stress and explain the unique ways employees, as individuals, perceive stressful situations, and appraise it as a threat.

The appraisal of the stressor is what triggers an emotional response and these emotional responses differ between individuals. The appraisal gives the context ‘relational meaning’ in that the individual attaches a meaning to the stressor through their unique interaction with it. The relationship the employee has with their working environment is therefore a transactional one in that it is a unique interaction with their environment.

There are two types of appraisals- primary and secondary. A primary appraisal is the initial assessment of the situation and the evaluation of potential harm to the individual. A secondary appraisal is where the individual assesses whether they have the resources to cope with the stressor. Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) also account for this in their Affective Events Theory, positing a two-way process between the appraisal of the stressor and the subsequent response. Although the affective response, or the feeling that the employee has because of the workplace stressor, may be the result of the employee’s appraisal of the stressor rather than the stressor itself, the stressor may actually contribute to the appraisal process in the first place.

Some workplace events can cause negative emotions that subsequently result in negative attitudes and behaviours, rather than them actually being the result of the employee’s appraisal of the event. In this sense, the event actually played a role in causing the stress and feeding into future appraisals of the situation and can actually change the individual’s affective disposition. The Affective Events Theory accounts for this in a two-way process: an employee can perceive an event within their organisation (and out) and depending on how they appraise the event will determine the affective response. Paradoxically, the affective response will influence the attitudes and behaviours employees have within the organisation.

Workplace events that lead to negative affective responses may also lead to negative organisational outcomes such as absenteeism, reduced productivity and turnover and potentially influencing job satisfaction, work attitudes and wellbeing in the same way that positive affect is linked to better job satisfaction, productivity and commitment. Both positive and negative affect can influence organisational outcomes in the sense that they may impact on mood and behaviour.

Consequences of Personality Differences on Wellbeing

Researchers into personality theory have drawn a link between Type A behaviour and coronary heart disease, as well as other physical health disorders. Type A behaviour is a spectrum of behavioural traits that encompass highly competitive behaviour, impatience, hostility, time consciousness, feelings of pressure and restlessness, that is often compared to the more relaxed and easy-going nature of their Type B counterparts.

Other research into personality theory have noted another factor- external locus of control (attributing control of situations to external sources)- and subsequently found that there was a link between higher perceived levels of stress in individuals who have Type A personality and an external locus of control. These greater levels of perceived stress have also been linked to lower levels of job satisfaction and health and wellbeing with other studies showing that Type A and B personality types influencing the way an individual appraises situational problems.

Although Type A personality and external locus of control have been shown to have the most harmful impact on job stress, having an external locus of control has shown the greater impact on perceived levels of stress. Type A behaviour also influences perceived quantitative overload with further studies including neuroticism traits surpassing Type A behaviour and locus of control factors when it comes to self-reports of stress.

Personality differences may play a role in the perception of stress, but they may also account for why certain individuals choose an occupation in the first place. Those with Type A personalities may actually choose a role that matches their behavioural traits, yet this may be precisely what impacts on their perception of stress in the first place. Despite those with Type A personalities reporting lower levels of job satisfaction and higher levels of stress, they may be better placed in some roles than their type B counterparts. For instance, if an individual has type A behavioural traits that are not too excessive this may actually contribute to increased job performance. While personality differences may impact on working relations, working conditions have also been attributed to causing personality changes that impact on wellbeing levels too.

Written by Farhan Shahzad and Sarah Davies-Robertson

Read More…

Burnout: A Brief Overview

Occupational burnout is a psychological syndrome that causes emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation or cynicism and a lack of accomplishment or inefficacy, which is the result of prolonged stress.
There are five further costs: physical, emotional, interpersonal, attitudinal and behavioural. Occupational burnout is both an organisational and employee issue. It is linked to lower job satisfaction, higher attrition rates, morale problems and staff turnover. The impacts of burnout cost organisations through loss of employees, rising sickness absence, and even presenteeist behaviour. Burnout compromises an employee’s performance, leading to lowered productivity and further organisational costs.
In employees, burnout causes both mental and physical health problems. The causes of which has been linked to office politics, menial tasks that interfere with actual work (Cook, 2006) and job characteristics such as role ambiguity, conflict, work overload (Cook, 2006) and lack of autonomy. Problems with managers are also an issue, as are the lack of reciprocation in the psychological contract.
Research has shown a burnout cycle, whereby employees display certain burnout tendencies and behaviours. They begin with feeling exhausted so engage in presenteeist behaviour, which later leads to exasperated levels of exhaustion. Employees begin to work hard to mediate against the effects of burnout, but in doing so they cause greater exhaustion. Other perspectives centre on employees working hard and long hours, displaying presenteeist behaviours, which leads to further exhaustion, followed by more presenteeism. It’s a chicken and egg phenomenon.
Researchers are on the fence as to what causes it- whether it is situational, individual or both. However, while individual differences, such as personality type and behavioural traits do play a role, and that burnout is mostly caused by situational factors, especially situational factors that do not breed the desired result. In fact, the better the worker, the more prone to burnout. Job demands, such as that discussed in the Job Demands Model, are linked to occupational stress and therefore burnout, which can be mediated by support from family and friends.
While burnout was originally researched in the helping or people professions, it is not limited to these professions. Burnout is on the rise in occupations within the so-called square mile, where individuals are becoming deflated by the long hours, lack of organisational commitment and no real sense of purpose. Its impact transcends the organisational impact, and not only impacts on health and wellbeing, but the negative attitudes and loss of feeling caused by exhaustion, coupled with loss of idealism and purpose means that family and social life are affected. Burnout leads to withdrawal of normal behaviours and pleasures, which further impacts on the wellbeing of the employee.
For those in the service-related industry, such as teaching, health and social care, it is particularly problematic because it impacts on the wellbeing of patients under the employee’s care. It can lead to decreased performance that impact on patient care. Likewise, the impact of suffering in patients can affect employees, leading to burnout. Those in mental healthcare are particularly prone, due to the embodying nature of their role and use of empathy, with those in longer service exhibiting high rates of burnout. Social workers and psychiatrists are particularly effected, rather than their colleagues, psychologists and support workers, who exhibit less signs overall, which risk a loss of compassion and empathy towards their clients.
Outside of healthcare, those working in people facing roles, such as teaching and lecturing, are also at risk. Journalists working on sensationalised news pieces that deal with violent and traumatic events are also at risk.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have issued a report into stress reduction in the workplace and offered advice for organisations to help reduce stress. This is known as their Management Standards and includes six areas: demand, control, support, relationships, role and change. Their advice is for workplaces to manage these characteristics properly to mediate the effects of organisational stress that can lead to burnout. Healthy working environments, work-life balance and social support are proven mediators against organisational stress.

Mediating Factors

According to the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR), there is a link between work-family balance and the three components exhibited during burnout. Employees have limited resources, and if their family time is compromised, this impacts on their work.
There are three components to the Conservation of Resources theory, which states stress can develop under three of the conditions: 1) loss of resources such as income; 2) threat or perceived threat of loss of resources and 3) what is expected does not take place (psychological contract is broken). Organisations can be clear on their expectations, making sure to avoid ambiguity when dealing with employees, and offer family friendly policies, which have shown to help prevent burnout.
Further to the research on mediating factors, organisations must effectively manage individual differences. Different personalities respond in differing ways to stress. Those on the introverted side of the intro-extra scale can suffer from collaborative overload and need time to recharge in isolation, meaning that organisations should also manage burnout by being employee focused and engaging the employee in the process.

The High Octane Woman

Sherrie Bourg Carter coined the phrase ”high octane woman’ in her book, High-Octane Women: How Superachievers Can Avoid Burnout. The book discusses an important facet of stress management, one where a one-size fits all approach is not helpful in combatting burnout.
We are all individuals with a unique personality and a unique set of circumstances. We cannot rely on one approach to treat something as complex as mental health. Teaching resilience and stress management is a multifaceted approach that relies on supporting a person wholistically.
If you are in an orgnisation where stress management is overlooked in favour of results, and where mental ill health is trivialised, then it may be time to find another job. Organisations like this can damage a person’s health because they place the bottom line above health and wellness.
On the flip side, outside factors do play a role in a person’s ability to manage stress. There could be a ‘tip of the iceberg’ phenomenon which is the straw that broke the camel’s back and tips someone over the edge. The cumulative effect of stress should not be overlooked.
Finally, a person’s temperament is important in seeing how they handle stress. Those with more relaxed personalities that have an internal locus of control are more likely to overcome stress than those that score highly on the trait neuroticism.

Dr. Farhan Shahzad is medico legal doctor based in Sydney, Australia.

Read More…

Stress at work is commonplace. Whether it be a toxic work culture, a bad boss, or over-delegation, many people seem to be stressed out in a post-covid work.

You’d have thought the pandemic would have changed us, but it looks kike organisations still have a lot to learn….

Here’s a look at some well-known Organisational Stress Models:

The Cooper-Marshall Model

A number of stress models that focus on the individual, the organisational structure or on both have been posited. The Cooper-Marshall Model (1976) considers a range of organisational stressors and their potential impact on the individual (both physically and psychologically), as well as covering what they call ‘extra-organisational sources of stress’ that can also impact on the employee. These include family and financial problems that occur outside of work. Karasek (1979) offers an alternative account of occupational stress that is called the Job Strain Model. Job strain, or psychological strain, is the result of workload (or work demands) and not enough autonomy (which is defined as decision latitude). Strain occurs when the employee’s work demands are too high and the level of decision autonomy they have is low.

The Job Strain Model

According to The Job Strain Model, low decision latitude and high job demands result in psychological strain, which can be counteracted by increasing the employee’s level of autonomy (or decision-making abilities). However, although increasing the employee’s decision latitude has been shown to reduce strain, beyond a certain level this may have adverse impacts on the employee’s wellbeing. Managerial staff, and what he defines as ‘low status workers,’ have shown strikingly different results when it comes to the impacts of decision latitude on wellbeing. Hence, it is important to account for an individual’s role within the organisation when determining what level of decision autonomy would be effective. Similarly, Warr’s (1987) Vitamin Model complements the Job Strain Model in the sense that personal control beyond a certain level has negative consequences on wellbeing.

The Vitamin Model

The Vitamin Model utilises the analogy of vitamins A and D and C and E to gain an understanding on how job characteristics impact on employee wellbeing in a non-linear fashion. The Vitamin Model accounts for 12 job characteristics that can be compared to these vitamins. Six of the job characteristics are analogous to vitamins A and D and the other six are comparable to vitamins C and E. Just like our bodies require vitamins for survival, certain aspects of the job are required for wellbeing. However, just like vitamins A and D, which beyond a certain dose are harmful, certain job characteristics that are needed for wellbeing can also be harmful to employees beyond a certain threshold. These job characteristics include opportunity for control, opportunity for gaining new skills and use of skills, externally generated goals, variety, environmental clarity and contact with others.

The Vitamin Model states that some job features are similar to vitamins C and E in that, even in excess, although they may not be harmful, they have no additional benefit. These include availability of money, physical security, valued social position, supportive supervision, career outlook and equity. The Vitamin Model is useful in that it allows organisations to acknowledge the characteristics that need to be in place for employee wellbeing, while emphasising that there can be ‘too much of a good thing’, which consequently impact on the wellness of employees.

Personality Factors: The Role of Individual Differences in Stress Appraisal

The previous paragraphs have discussed a number of models that look at key organisational factors that can contribute to the wellbeing of employees and the organisation. Despite this, a number of researchers have accounted for the role of the employee’s personality in their response to stress. This is known as individual differences, which essentially accounts for the unique characteristics an individual has, with potential consequences to how they interact with their environment.

While occupational stressors and job characteristics may have an impact on employee wellbeing, not all employees will react to these stressors in the same way, if at all. The Person-Environment Fit (French and Caplan, 1972) encompasses individual differences and asserts that it is the individual’s interaction with their environment that causes stress in the way that Parkes (1994) argues that the relationship between the individual and the organisation as factors that contribute to stress is non-invariant. Thus, the definition of stress here is subjective and it is the individual’s perception of the stress as a threat that causes psychological strain.

According to the Person-Environment Fit, stress, as a result of work overload, is because the employee does not have the capabilities to manage their workload, while acknowledging that others may be able to manage that level of work with ease. While capabilities are factors that should be accounted for, employee stress is more complex than merely the level of work an individual can manage. Stress arises because the individual perceives it to exceed the amount of coping resources they have. Subjective feelings of overload can give rise to stress, especially if the stress surpasses what the individual believes they can cope with. Individual differences account for the subjective nature of occupational stress and explain the unique ways employees, as individuals, perceive stressful situations, and appraise it as a threat.

The appraisal of the stressor is what triggers an emotional response and these emotional responses differ between individuals. The appraisal gives the context ‘relational meaning’ in that the individual attaches a meaning to the stressor through their unique interaction with it. The relationship the employee has with their working environment is therefore a transactional one in that it is a unique interaction with their environment.

There are two types of appraisals- primary and secondary. A primary appraisal is the initial assessment of the situation and the evaluation of potential harm to the individual. A secondary appraisal is where the individual assesses whether they have the resources to cope with the stressor. Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) also account for this in their Affective Events Theory, positing a two-way process between the appraisal of the stressor and the subsequent response. Although the affective response, or the feeling that the employee has because of the workplace stressor, may be the result of the employee’s appraisal of the stressor rather than the stressor itself, the stressor may actually contribute to the appraisal process in the first place.

Some workplace events can cause negative emotions that subsequently result in negative attitudes and behaviours, rather than them actually being the result of the employee’s appraisal of the event. In this sense, the event actually played a role in causing the stress and feeding into future appraisals of the situation and can actually change the individual’s affective disposition. The Affective Events Theory accounts for this in a two-way process: an employee can perceive an event within their organisation (and out) and depending on how they appraise the event will determine the affective response. Paradoxically, the affective response will influence the attitudes and behaviours employees have within the organisation.

Workplace events that lead to negative affective responses may also lead to negative organisational outcomes such as absenteeism, reduced productivity and turnover and potentially influencing job satisfaction, work attitudes and wellbeing in the same way that positive affect is linked to better job satisfaction, productivity and commitment. Both positive and negative affect can influence organisational outcomes in the sense that they may impact on mood and behaviour.

While many of these focus on organisational problems that can lead to burnout, there is less focus on bullying, harassment and toxic bosses that may possess dark triad personality traits. Such organisational characteristics can lead to lifelong mental health problems that far outweigh any temporary feelings of stress.

Read More: https://medium.com/@sarahgrace221084/the-causes-of-work-related-stress-theories-and-models-7e5a9218a0a7