Acceptance of an Internet-Based Team Development Tool Aimed at Improving Work-Related Well-being in Nurses: Cross-sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: Workplace health interventions can produce beneficial health- and business-related outcomes. However, such interventions have traditionally focused on lifestyle behaviors of individuals, mostly not considering the role of working conditions. The wecoach intervention is an internet-based tool that combines both a digital and a participatory team development approach aimed at addressing critical job demands and resources as key aspects of health-promoting working conditions. Nursing staff are particularly affected by challenging working conditions and could potentially benefit greatly. Understanding the acceptance of novel workplace health promotion approaches is a critical precursor to their successful implementation and use. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to examine the factors influencing the acceptance of a digitally supported team development tool among nurse managers. METHODS: A sample of 32 nurse managers from 3 German-speaking countries tested wecoach and completed our online questionnaire. Hypotheses were based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the organizational health development (OHD) model and were tested using multiple regression analyses. RESULTS: Our analyses found that merely capacities on the team level (CapTeam) significantly contributed to the acceptance of wecoach, although only after the other variables were excluded in the stepwise multiple regression analysis. The UTAUT predictors were unable to add significant variance explanation beyond that, and their inclusion masked the contribution of CapTeam. CONCLUSIONS: For the acceptance of a digitally supported participatory tool, the fit with the team, its culture, and its motivation are of critical importance, while aspects proposed by traditional acceptance models, such as the UTAUT, may not be applicable.

The Key Job Demands and Resources of Nursing Staff: An Integrative Review of Reviews.

The aim of our review is to identify the key job resources and demands of nursing staff by integrating findings from previously published reviews along the lines of the JD-R model. Understanding these is highly relevant given the ever-increasing pressure in nursing work and the challenges of healthcare organizations in recruiting qualified staff. It is also an important step toward developing targeted workplace interventions. A comprehensive search of the literature identified 14 quantitative and qualitative reviews that were included in our integrative review of reviews. Thematic analysis identified three key job demands and six key job resources of nursing staff, namely work overload, lack of formal rewards, work-life interference, supervisor support, fair and authentic management, transformational leadership, interpersonal relations, autonomy and professional resources. Our results corroborate findings from previous reviews, expand the relevance and generalizability by considering a broader range of relevant health-related and motivational outcomes, and highlight the importance of leadership practices in nursing.

"Resources-Demands Ratio": Translating the JD-R-Model for company stakeholders.

OBJECTIVES: Practitioners and organizational leaders are calling for practical ways to explain and monitor factors that affect workplace health and productivity. This article builds on the well-established Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and proposes an empirically tested ratio that aggregates indicators of job resources and demands. In this study, we calculate a ratio of generalizable job resources and demands derived from the JD-R model and then translate the ratio into the language of company stakeholders. METHODS: We calculated a ratio based on measures applied in a large stress management intervention study (n = 2983) and report the findings from cross-sectional analysis with health and productivity outcomes from same-source and separate-source data. RESULTS: Findings showed a strong and unambiguous increase in health and productivity measures with each step of increase in the ratio. Loss in explained variance due to aggregation of two factors into a single ratio is small for measures which are known to be predicted by both factors simultaneously. CONCLUSIONS: A translation and visualization of the ratio that is accessible to practitioners and organizational leaders is presented and its use in companies discussed.

The relationship between resourceful working conditions, work-related and general sense of coherence.

Sense of coherence (SoC) has been identified as an important health resource and is associated with various health-related outcomes, especially perceived health and mental health. SoC has also been found to be relevant in the work context. Our study examined whether job resources, such as autonomy or social support, can contribute to the development of SoC. We also examined the role of the setting-specific work-related sense of coherence (Work-SoC) as well as reciprocal relationships between the three variables. Participants (941) from Germany, Switzerland and Austria completed our questionnaires at three waves of data collection. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the best fitting model and interpret the relationships between variables. Our first hypothesis that job resources predict Work-SoC and that Work-SoC predicts SoC was confirmed. We also found support for our second hypothesis that SoC predicts Work-SoC and that Work-SoC predicts job resources. The indirect effects through Work-SoC were only marginally significant in both directions. Our findings illustrate complex and multidirectional relationships between the variables. Job resources seem to contribute to the strengthening of Work-SoC, which seems to set in motion a gain cycle of improved job resources, which again contribute to a higher Work-SoC. Over time, this might contribute to strengthening general SoC. However, our findings showed that SoC was highly stable over the observed 3-month interval, limiting the effect any other variable could exert on it. Future research should further examine the mechanisms and timeframes over which a setting-specific SoC contributes to the development of overall SoC.