Lean on Me: A Scoping Review of the Essence of Workplace Support Among Child Welfare Workers.

Child welfare workers (CWWs) often work under conditions similar in nature to workers within safety critical organizations (SCOs). This is because most of their work surrounds child neglect, securing homes for foster children, haphazard, and intricate cases, among other things, and where making wrong decisions, inattention to details, and the likes could lead to adverse consequences especially for the kids within their care. Research has shown that employees who experience support at work often report less stress symptoms, burnout, and a host of other negative workplace experiences. Experience of support at work has also been found to boost employees' retention, job satisfaction, and productivity. Despite this development, research exploring the essence of workplace support among CWW is very scarce in the literature, and we know very little about the type of workplace support and their influence on a host of workplace outcomes, especially the negative ones like secondary traumatic stress, aggression, and violence toward CWWs. The purpose of the current scoping review was to uncover what is known about workplace support and their relationship with workplace outcomes among CWWs. The authors explored four databases and identified 55 primary studies investigating workplace support and workplace outcomes among CWWs in the review. Studies mostly framed support under three main support types of coworker/peer support, social/organizational/management support, and supervisor/leadership support. Findings showed that workplace support has a positive impact on workplace variables like job satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and reduces the risk of turnover, burnout, and other negative workplace variables. The review highlights possible directions for future research.

A pilot study examining if satisfaction of basic needs can ameliorate negative effects of shift work.

The objective of the present study was to investigate if satisfaction of the basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness is related to shift work tolerance, specifically physical and mental fatigue, insomnia, and digestive troubles in a sample of shift workers. This is a cross-sectional pilot questionnaire study, including 252 shift workers employed in a municipality in Norway. Autonomy was negatively related to physical fatigue and digestive troubles, while competence was negatively related to mental fatigue. Relatedness showed significant correlations with insomnia and mental fatigue, but did not reach significance in the regression model controlling for the two other basic needs as well as work scheduling, night work exposure, and sleep medication. Sleep medication was significant in the final regression model for insomnia, but unrelated to fatigue and digestive troubles. The demographic variables, work hours per week, work schedule, and night work exposure were unrelated to all four measures of shift work tolerance. Autonomy and competence may be more important for fatigue and digestive troubles among shift workers than work arrangement variables, night work exposure, and sleep medication use.

Individual, situational and lifestyle factors related to shift work tolerance among nurses who are new to and experienced in night work.

AIM: To identify individual, situational and lifestyle variables related to shift work tolerance among nurses who have worked night shifts for less than 1 year and nurses who have worked night shift for more than 6 years, all engaged in rotating shift work. BACKGROUND: Working shifts is related to negative health consequences. Factors related to shift work tolerance may differ between nurses with little experience and nurses with extensive experience in night work. DESIGN: Cross-sectional questionnaire study. METHODS: A questionnaire including established instruments measuring shift work tolerance, personality, work schedule and lifestyle factors was administered between November 2008-May 2010. Randomly selected Norwegian nurses (n = 749) participated in the study; 322 were new and 427 were experienced in night work. RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences in shift work tolerance between the new to night work nurses and the nurses who were experienced in night work. Young age was related to higher shift work tolerance. Hardiness was positively related to shift work tolerance in both groups. For the new to night work nurses, morningness was positively related to shift work tolerance. For the experienced in night work nurses, languidity, work hours per week and caffeine consumption were negatively, but flexibility was positively, related to shift work tolerance. CONCLUSION: Several variables were related to shift work tolerance among rotating shift working nurses, especially hardiness. Somewhat different variables were related to shift work tolerance for nurses who were new to night work than for nurses with more experience in night work.

Individual differences in tolerance to shift work--a systematic review.

Shift work tolerance is a term describing the ability to adapt to shift work without adverse consequences. In this paper we systematically review literature published investigating the relation between individual differences such as age, gender, personality, morningness/eveningness as well as biological variables and different measures of shift work tolerance from 1998 till 2009. A total of 60 articles were included in this review, of which ten studies were classified as longitudinal, while the rest were classified as cross-sectional. Overall, the studies indicate that young age, male gender, low scores on morningness, high scores on flexibility and low scores on languidity, low scores on neuroticism, high scores on extraversion and internal locus of control and some genetic dispositions are related to higher shift work tolerance. More longitudinal studies, especially concerning personality, are needed to make conclusions about the predictive power of individual differences for shift work tolerance.

Employees' job satisfaction after the introduction of a total smoke-ban in bars and restaurants in Norway.

The aim of the study was to investigate possible effects of a total smoke-ban in Norwegian bars and restaurants (introduced on June 1st 2004) on employees' job satisfaction. A national representative sample was randomly selected from the public registry of all companies in the hospitality business. A baseline survey was conducted in May 2004, follow-up measurements were performed in September/October 2004 and May 2005. Altogether, 1525 employees agreed to participate in the baseline survey. Among respondents at baseline, 894 (59.4%) remained in the sample at the first follow-up and 758 (49.7%) at the second follow-up. Analysis of variance for repeated measures revealed a significant three-way interaction between personal smoking behaviour, attitudes towards the ban before it was enacted and time from baseline to the second follow-up. A small decline in job satisfaction was found between baseline and the first follow-up among employees who were daily smokers and had a negative attitude towards the ban. There was, however, an increase in job satisfaction between the first and second follow-up among the others (non-smokers and smokers with a positive attitude towards the ban). While job satisfaction was higher among smokers with negative attitudes towards the ban than among other employees before the ban entered into force, the opposite was the case one year later. The work environments in bars and restaurants seem to have changed towards being more satisfactory for non-smokers and smokers with positive attitudes towards the ban before it was enacted. In contrast, a small but persisting worsening of job satisfaction was found among employees that were daily smokers and had a negative attitude towards the ban.

Dispositional resistance to change: measurement equivalence and the link to personal values across 17 nations.

The concept of dispositional resistance to change has been introduced in a series of exploratory and confirmatory analyses through which the validity of the Resistance to Change (RTC) Scale has been established (S. Oreg, 2003). However, the vast majority of participants with whom the scale was validated were from the United States. The purpose of the present work was to examine the meaningfulness of the construct and the validity of the scale across nations. Measurement equivalence analyses of data from 17 countries, representing 13 languages and 4 continents, confirmed the cross-national validity of the scale. Equivalent patterns of relationships between personal values and RTC across samples extend the nomological net of the construct and provide further evidence that dispositional resistance to change holds equivalent meanings across nations.

The destructiveness of laissez-faire leadership behavior.

The aim of the study is to test the assumption that laissez-faire leadership behavior is not a type of zero-leadership, but a type of destructive leadership behavior that shows systematic relationships with workplace stressors, bullying at work, and psychological distress. A survey of 2,273 Norwegian employees was conducted and analyzed. Laissez-faire leadership was positively correlated with role conflict, role ambiguity, and conflicts with coworkers. Path modeling showed that these stressors mediated the effects of laissez-faire leadership on bullying at work and that the effects of laissez-faire leadership on distress were mediated through the workplace stressors, especially through exposure to bullying. The results support the assumption that laissez-faire leadership behavior is a destructive leadership behavior.