Occupational health psychology research and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to generate threats to occupational health, safety, and well-being. As a result, it presents an opportunity to deepen the field's insights into occupational health psychology (OHP), and to offer practical guidance that may help workers, organizations, and society mitigate the pandemic's negative effects. This special section of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (JOHP) addresses several implications of the pandemic for well-being and work behavior. The pandemic raises many additional questions deserving of research attention. Such topics include the implications of organizations' evolving workforce and workplace decisions, and work as a mechanism for public health and societal well-being. OHP research also has the potential to generate ideas that may prove useful for addressing future crises. A greater consideration of context may help the field achieve such aims. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Work-related stress, work/life balance and personal life coaching.

Work-related stress adversely affects personal performance, organizational efficiency and patient care as well as costing the NHS millions of pounds each year. Reducing the effects of work-related stress is a legal duty for all employers. There are a number of resources available to help both employees and employers, such as the Health and Safety Executive stress management standards. Personal life coaching is one approach to reducing work-related stress, which is well established amongst business and management executives as well as some public sector organizations.

Divergent effects of transformational and passive leadership on employee safety.

The authors concurrently examined the impact of safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership on safety outcomes. First, the authors demonstrated via confirmatory factor analysis that safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership are empirically distinct constructs. Second, using hierarchical regression, the authors illustrated, contrary to a stated corollary of transformational leadership theory (B. M. Bass, 1997), that passive leadership contributes incrementally to the prediction of organizationally relevant outcomes, in this case safety-related variables, beyond transformational leadership alone. Third, further analyses via structural equation modeling showed that both transformational and passive leadership have opposite effects on safety climate and safety consciousness, and these variables, in turn, predict safety events and injuries. Implications for research and application are discussed.

The implementation of ergonomics advice and the stage of change approach.

This paper investigates the implementation of injury prevention advice tailored according to the Stage of Change (SOC) approach. The managers of 25 workgroups, drawn from medium to large companies across a wide range of occupational sectors were allocated to receive either standard ergonomics advice or ergonomics advice tailored according to the workgroup SOC. Twelve months after the advice was provided, semi-structured interviews were conducted with each manager. In a multivariate model, managers who had received tailored advice were found to have implemented significantly more of the recommended changes (IRR = 1.68, 95% CI 1.07-2.63) and more "additional" changes (IRR = 1.90, 95% CI 1.12-3.20). Qualitative analysis identified that the key barriers and facilitators to the implementation of changes were largely related to worker resistance to change and the attitudes of senior managers towards health and safety. The findings from this study suggest that the implementation of ergonomics recommendations may be improved by the tailoring of advice according to SOC principles.

Occupational health psychology: an emerging discipline.

There is growing concern that rapidly changing patterns of work organization and employment pose risk for occupational illness and injury. In the present article, we assert that these changes create new needs and opportunities for research and practice by psychologists in the area of work organization and health. We begin with an historical overview of the contribution of psychologists to the occupational safety and health field, and to the study of work organization and health. We then describe new initiatives by the American Psychological Association and national health organizations in the United States and Europe to frame a new field of study--called "occupational health psychology"--that focuses on the topic of work organization and health. We conclude with a discussion of emerging research needs and trends within this field.

Reengineering health care. A new management tool aims to transform the organizational processes--and stir discussion.

Looking for improved clinical quality, reduced costs, streamlined operations? Advocates of business process reengineering say it can help achieve all those things. But what is reengineering in a health care context? Experts look at the conceptual, operational and information management challenges.

Managing reengineering implementation.

Reengineering provides the means to radically affect the way in which services are provided and results in significant change within an organization. Many reengineering efforts fail to deliver on their promises, however, because of poor implementation. This article reviews some key issues that organizations must address in order to manage the change effectively.

Reengineering: a manager's survival guide.

Reengineering has become a fact of life for all professionals in the healthcare industry. It is a time of dynamic change and challenge. This article describes ways in which healthcare professionals can assess the situation, evaluate the environment, and actively participate and cope with changes--in other words, ways to "survive" the process of reengineering.

The human side of reengineering.

This article on the human side of reengineering describes the issues and concerns faced by healthcare executives who are considering or who already are involved in a reengineering project. It offers a practical approach to understanding issues such as the importance of assessing the culture and its readiness for change, the importance of human resource policy development prior to initiating a reengineering project, and how to ensure buy-in and support from the healthcare organization and its community.

'Ergonomics in the Nordic European countries--a historical perspective': paper presented at IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress. International Ergonomics Association.

The Nordic Ergonomic Society was founded more than 30 years ago to represent Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Recently Iceland has also been included. The Nordic Ergonomics Society has, to a large extent, traditionally been oriented towards work in the area of physiology, and a large number of its members have backgrounds within such areas as work physiology, physiotherapy and rehabilitation. However, from its inception the society has had members who are experienced within, such fields as work psychology, design, engineering and occupational health and safety. Over the last decade we have also had new members from such areas as work sociology, organizational psychology, leadership, training, information technology and cybernetics. Members have been concerned mainly with the application and practice of ergonomics. The number of members involved in research has also increased over the years. The principal areas of application for such research have been within industry and government.