Determinants of psychological injury among health and social care workers in community settings: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Health and Social Care (HSC) workers face psychological health risks in the workplace. While many studies have described psychological injuries in HSC workers, few have examined the determinants. Previous research has primarily focused on hospitals, lacking systematic reviews of community-based settings. OBJECTIVE: To systematically identify and appraise current evidence on the determinants of psychological injuries among HSC workers in community settings. METHODS: Searches were conducted in three bibliographic databases, supplemented by citation searches. Included studies focused on community-based HSC workers, reporting statistical associations between psychological injury and personal, health, occupational, or organizational factors. Quantitative studies published in English between January 1, 2000 and August 15, 2023 were included. Quality appraisal was undertaken using the JBI critical appraisal checklist. RESULTS: Sixty-six studies were included. Study quality was highly variable, and all studies were cross-sectional. Twenty-three studies linked psychological injury with occupational factors (e.g. low job control, high job demands and low job satisfaction). Thirteen studies observed an association between work environment and psychological injury, and a further eleven between workplace social support and psychological injury. Fewer studies have examined the relationship between psychological injury and personal/individual factors. CONCLUSION: Occupational and organisational factors are significantly associated with psychological health among HSA workers, in community settings. These aspects of job design, work environment and workplace relationships are modifiable, suggesting an opportunity for work design interventions to improve workers' psychological health and reduce the prevalence of psychological injury in this sector.

How does subjective invulnerability impact young workers' safety voice?

INTRODUCTION: Young workers are at risk of workplace injuries for numerous reasons. One contentious yet untested theory is that subjective invulnerability to danger-a sense of indestructability in the face of physical hazards-can affect some young workers' reactions to workplace hazards. This study contends that subjective invulnerability can affect these reactions in two ways: (a) perceptions of physical hazards at work generate less fear of injury among those who perceive themselves as more invulnerable and/or; (b) fear of injury does not motivate speaking up about safety concerns (safety voice) among those who perceive themselves as more invulnerable. METHOD: This paper tests a moderated mediation model in which higher perceptions of physical hazards at work are related to higher safety voice intentions via higher fear of injury, but that subjective invulnerability reduces the extent to which: (a) perceptions of physical hazards at work are associated with fear of injury and/or; (b) fear of injury is associated with safety voice. This model is tested in two studies of young workers (Study 1 on-line experiment: N = 114, M age = 20.67, SD = 1.79; range = 18-24 years; Study 2 field study using three waves of data collected at monthly intervals: N = 80, M age = 17.13, SD = 1.08, range = 15-20 years). RESULTS: Contrary to expectations, the results showed that young workers who feel more invulnerable to danger are more likely to speak up about safety when experiencing higher fear of injury, and that perceptions of physical hazards-safety voice relationship is mediated by fear of injury for those who perceive themselves to be more invulnerable to danger. Conclusions/Practical Applications: Rather than subjective invulnerability silencing safety voice as predicted, the current data suggest that subjective invulnerability may serve to accelerate how fear of injury motivates safety voice.

Young workers and safety: A critical review and future research agenda.

INTRODUCTION: Research on young worker safety often relies on inconsistent definitions of young workers and poorly delineated indicators of occupational safety. This review aims to reconcile these fundamental issues by critically integrating research across disciplines and providing clear directions for future research on young worker safety. METHOD: We critically review the extant research on young worker safety. RESULTS: We first reconcile the inconsistent definitions of young workers and specify the indicators of occupational safety used in young worker safety research. We next describe the prevalence of workplace injuries and population-level predictors of these injuries among young workers and then outline other factors that increase young workers' susceptibility to workplace injuries. Finally, we discuss the convergence of many of these issues on family farms-a context commonly studied in young worker safety research. CONCLUSIONS: Clearer definitions of young workers and indicators of occupational safety can improve the interpretation and comparability of extant research findings. Furthermore, the prevalence of workplace injuries and population-level predictors of injury among young workers are subject to the interactions among age, gender, minority status, and job characteristics. Other factors that increase young workers' susceptibility to injury include young workers' responses to hazardous work, individual differences stemming from young workers' biological and psychological development, managerial attitudes about young workers, and the limited safety training young workers are thus provided, the types of work that young workers typically perform, and the range of social influences on young workers. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Safety campaigns and safety training should consider interactions among young workers' age, gender, minority status, and job characteristics, rather than considering these features independently.

Role of work breaks in well-being and performance: A systematic review and future research agenda.

Recovery from work is a critical component for employees' proper functioning. While research has documented the beneficial effects of after-work recovery, it has focused far less on the recovery that happens while at work in the form of work breaks. In this review, we systematically review available empirical evidence on the relationship between work breaks and well-being and performance among knowledge workers. Doing so enables us to (a) integrate studies from multiple disciplines, (b) propose a conceptual framework for categorizing work breaks, and (c) provide a future research agenda for studying the role of work breaks in employee well-being and performance. Using Cochrane's guidelines, we review observational and intervention studies (N = 83). Based on the extant research, we propose that work breaks can be described and classified in terms of five features: initiator, duration, frequency, activities, and experiences. The result of our review is an integrative model that comprehensively captures the relationship between work breaks and well-being and performance outcomes, as well as the mechanisms and boundary conditions of these relationships. We conclude by proposing avenues for the future study and practice of work breaks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analysis of leadership and workplace safety: Examining relative importance, contextual contingencies, and methodological moderators.

Given the high human and economic costs of workplace safety, researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to how leadership behaviors relate to workplace safety. Previous research has demonstrated that leadership behaviors are important for workplace safety. In this meta-analysis, we extend our understanding of the leadership-workplace safety relationship by (a) examining the associations between a broader range of five leadership categories-change-oriented, relational-oriented, task-oriented, passive, and destructive-and seven workplace safety variables; (b) investigating the relative importance of these leadership categories in explaining variance in these workplace safety variables; and (c) testing contextual and methodological contingencies of the leadership-workplace safety relationship. Using effect sizes from 194 samples (N = 104,364), we find that although leadership behaviors are associated with workplace safety, the leadership categories vary considerably in their relative importance. Task-oriented leadership followed by relational-oriented leadership emerge as the most important contributors to workplace safety. Change-oriented leadership (which includes transformational leadership) does not emerge as the largest contributor for any of the seven tested safety variables, despite it being the most frequently examined leadership model in the workplace safety literature. Effectiveness of leadership behaviors in relation to workplace safety varies by national culture power distance, industry risk, workforce age, as well as by contextualized forms of leadership (i.e., safety-specific vs. generalized). Finally, there is meta-analytic evidence for publication bias and common-method variance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring safety knowledge sharing among experienced and novice workers.

INTRODUCTION: This paper investigates how members of a culinary and hospitality arts program generate, share, and learn safety knowledge via social and identity mechanisms. METHOD: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 participants of varying roles and experience (i.e., students, culinary instructors, and restaurant chefs) in the culinary and hospitality arts program at a large polytechnic in western Canada. RESULTS: The emergent themes from these interviews indicated that the circulation of safety knowledge relied on the interaction among individuals with various levels of experience, such that those who were more experienced in the culinary arts were able to share safety knowledge with novices, who had less experience. Comparing safety knowledge gleaned from within the school against that gleaned from within the industry highlighted differences between the construction of safety in the two contexts. Notably, many aspects of safety knowledge are not learned in school and those that are may not apply in the industry context. We found that safety knowledge was shared through informal means such as storytelling, a process that allowed members to come to a deep, collective understanding of what safety meant, which they often labeled "common sense." CONCLUSION: We found that safety knowledge was a currency through which participants achieved legitimacy, generated through continual practical accomplishment of the work in interaction with others. Practical Applications: Our findings provide novel insights into how safety knowledge is shared, and we discuss the implications of these findings for classroom, work-based learning, and other forms of curricula.

Human resource management practices and organizational injury rates.

INTRODUCTION: This study investigated the extent to which five human resource management (HRM) practices-systematic selection, extensive training, performance appraisal, high relative compensation, and empowerment-simultaneously predicted later organizational-level injury rates. METHODS: Specifically, the association between these HRM practices (assessed via on-site audits by independent observers) with organizational injury rates collected by a national regulatory agency one and two years later were modeled. RESULTS: Results from 49 single-site UK organizations indicated that, after controlling for industry-level risk, organization size, and the other four HRM practices, only empowerment predicted lower subsequent organizational-level injury rates. Practical Applications: Findings from the current study have important implications for the design of HRM systems and for organizational-level policies and practices associated with better employee safety.

Parents' work injuries and children's mental health: The moderating role of children's work centrality.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between parents' work-related injuries and their children's mental health, and whether children's work centrality - the extent to which a child believes work will play an important part in their life - exacerbates or buffers this relationship. METHOD: We argue that high work centrality can exacerbate the relationship between parental work injuries and children's mental health, with parental work injuries acting as identity-threatening stressors; in contrast, high work centrality may buffer this relationship, with parental work injuries acting as identity-confirming stressors. We test this relationship with a sample of Canadian children (N = 4,884, 46.2% female, M age = 13.67 years). RESULTS: Children whose parents had experienced more frequent lost-time work-related injuries reported worse mental health with high work centrality buffering this negative relationship. CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights the vicarious effects of work injuries on salient others, specifically parental work injuries on children's mental health, as well as the role of work centrality in shaping children's sense-making and expectations about the consequences of work.

Revisiting vulnerability: Comparing young and adult workers' safety voice intentions under different supervisory conditions.

In this study, we test the widely held belief that young workers (aged 15-24) are less likely than adults (aged 25 and over) to speak up about safety concerns. Counter to this belief, and in line with age-related resource selectivity theory, we hypothesized that older workers would actually be less likely than younger workers to speak up about workplace safety concerns ("safety voice intentions") when their supervisors are unclear about their own commitment to safety. To test this, we created two realistic scenarios in which we manipulated clarity of supervisor commitment to safety: (1) it is clear the supervisor clearly cares about/is open to hearing suggestions about safety (the "clear commitment" condition) and (2) it is unclear whether the supervisor cares about/is open to hearing suggestions about safety (the "unclear commitment" condition). We randomly assigned participants (N = 80; 58 % women; 40 % over the age of 24) to one of the two scenarios and measured their safety voice intentions. In the face of clear supervisor commitment to safety, younger and adult workers did not differ on their safety voice intentions. However, compared to younger workers, adult workers were less likely to speak up about safety in the face of unclear signals about the supervisor's commitment to safety. These findings have implications for our understanding of young and adult worker safety voice, and the importance of how supervisors signal commitment to safety.