Beliefs of University Employees Leaving During a Fire Alarm: A Theory-based Belief Elicitation

Background@#Despite workplaces having policies on fire evacuation, many employees still fail to evacuate when there is a fire alarm. The Reasoned Action Approach is designed to reveal the beliefs underlying people's behavioral decisions and thus suggests causal determinants to be addressed with interventions designed to facilitate behavior. This study is a uses a Reasoned Action Approach salient belief elicitation to identify university employees' perceived advantages/disadvantages, approvers/disapprovers, and facilitators/barriers toward them leaving the office building immediately the next time they hear a fire alarm at work. @*Methods@#Employees at a large public United States Midwestern university completed an online cross-sectional survey. A descriptive analysis of the demographic and background variables was completed, and a six-step inductive content analysis of the open-ended responses was conducted to identify beliefs about leaving during a fire alarm. @*Results@#Regarding consequence, participants perceived that immediately leaving during a fire alarm at work had more disadvantages than advantages, such as low risk perception. Regarding referents, supervisors and coworkers were significant approvers with intention to leave immediately. None of the perceived advantages were significant with intention. Participants listed access and risk perception as significant circumstances with the intention to evacuate immediately. @*Conclusion@#Norms and risk perceptions are key determinants that may influence employees to evacuate immediately during a fire alarm at work. Normative-based and attitude-based interventions may prove effective in increasing the fire safety practices of employees.

Associations between Poorer Mental Health with Work-Related Effort, Reward, and Overcommitment among a Sample of Formal US Solid Waste Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background@#Effort–reward imbalance (ERI) and overcommitment at work have been associated poorer mental health. However, nonlinear and nonadditive effects have not been investigated previously. @*Methods@#The association between effort, reward, and overcommitment with odds of poorer mental health was examined among a sample of 68 formal United States waste workers (87% male). Traditional, logistic regression and Bayesian Kernel machine regression (BKMR) modeling was conducted. Models controlled for age, education level, race, gender, union status, and physical health status. @*Results@#The traditional, logistic regression found only overcommitment was significantly associated with poorer mental health (IQR increase: OR = 6.7; 95% CI: 1.7 to 25.5) when controlling for effort and reward (or ERI alone). Results from the BKMR showed that a simultaneous IQR increase in higher effort, lower reward, and higher overcommitment was associated with 6.6 (95% CI: 1.7 to 33.4) times significantly higher odds of poorer mental health. An IQR increase in overcommitment was associated with 5.6 (95% CI: 1.6 to 24.9) times significantly higher odds of poorer mental health when controlling for effort and reward. Higher effort and lower reward at work may not always be associated with poorer mental health but rather they may have an inverse, U-shaped relationship with mental health. No interaction between effort, reward, or overcommitment was observed. @*Conclusion@#When taking into the consideration the relationship between effort, reward, and overcommitment, overcommitment may be most indicative of poorer mental health. Organizations should assess their workers' perceptions of overcommitment to target potential areas of improvement to enhance mental health outcomes.