Support for safety in the fire service: a test of reciprocal causality for safety motivation.

Much research has identified safety motivation as an essential individual-level antecedent of safety performance. Recently, scholars have shown interest in workplace support as an essential factor of safety motivation. While support from different sources is theoretically distinct, each is argued to be not just an antecedent, but also an outcome of the other. A similar reciprocal relationship is also expected between support and safety motivation. Our research utilised the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1988) to examine the role of each source of support on safety motivation; and investigate their reciprocal relationships. We used structural equation modelling to analyse three-wave longitudinal data (three months apart) from 314 firefighters throughout Malaysia. The result confirmed direct relationships and interestingly, denied that reciprocal relationships exist between organisational support, social support, and safety motivation over time. Our study recommends that the fire department should encourage support from all sources, primarily from senior management since it is the catalyst that activates support from other sources.

The relationship between safety climate and safety performance: A review.

INTRODUCTION: Since its inception more than four decades ago, research on safety climate has been conducted in many industries. Subsequently, a plethora of systematic literature reviews on safety climate in various work environments has focused on research trends and measurement scales. Yet, despite these reviews, the overall picture of how safety climate influences performance is still not well understood. The current study reviews existing literature on safety climate, specifically how it affects safety performance. METHOD: Literature searches were conducted using EBSCOhost and Web of Science databases in March 2021. We included English-language, peer-reviewed studies that reported the results of research done on safety climate and safety performance. We extracted data (contextual, theoretical, methodological and definition of safety performance) from these studies and were deductively analyzed and categorized into common themes. RESULTS: One hundred and sixty-two safety climate studies were identified. We found that studies on safety climate-performance were conducted in 16 types of industries while 23 different theories explained the safety climate-performance relationship. The quantity and quality of variables and methods used varied considerably across the surveys. Safety climate is predominantly used as a predictor while safety-related behavior is the most common definition of safety performance among the articles we reviewed. Few papers from the current review were methodologically strong, suggesting that current evidence on the link between safety climate and safety performance still suffers from common method bias. CONCLUSIONS: Although literature has provided evidence for the positive effect on safety performance via a strong safety climate, strong and convincing methods are still lacking and the causality of an improved safety climate still needs to be demonstrated. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: The findings of the current review offer a better understanding of how employers can improve safety climate in the workplace in various settings.

Effect of psychosocial safety climate on psychological distress via job resources, work engagement and workaholism: a multilevel longitudinal study.

Objective. Our innovation was to propose a multilevel model to explain how an organizational factor, psychosocial safety climate (PSC) - the climate for worker psychological health - related to work investment (work engagement and workaholism) and, in turn, psychological distress. Methods. Longitudinal data were collected in Peninsular Malaysia across 26 police departments from 392 police personnel, matched across 4 months, and were tested using hierarchical linear modeling. Results. The analysis revealed between-group effects linking PSC to job resources, to work engagement and to workaholism. When PSC operated by improving job resources, aside from increased work engagement, it could unwittingly boost workaholism. However, this only existed under low PSC conditions. The secondary function of PSC buffered the impact of job resources on workaholism and psychological distress. When PSC was high, job resources reduced both workaholism and psychological distress, suggesting that PSC enabled resources to do their job of mitigating unfavorable conditions. Conclusions. Results support a multilevel PSC-extended job demands-resources motivational path with cross-links, and PSC's moderation function, as an explanation of worker psychological health. Confirming PSC as a leading indicator and the importance of a motivational path, this article presents new evidence in support of targeting PSC to improve worker psychological health.

Psychosocial safety climate improves psychological detachment and relaxation during off-job recovery time to reduce emotional exhaustion: A multilevel shortitudinal study.

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a facet-specific climate for psychological health and safety which constitutes an important organizational resource for creating a conducive work environment. The process to regain/restore energy expended at work, known as "recovery," also plays a pivotal role for individuals; however, this process, together with PSC, remains largely underexplored. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of PSC in enhancing the moderating role of individuals' psychological detachment and relaxation during weekends on the relationship between daily job demands in Week 1 and daily emotional exhaustion in Week 2. Data from a shortitudinal study of 178 teachers (in total, 534 diaries) in Terengganu, Malaysia, over two consecutive weeks, were operationalized at the individual level and daily level using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) software. The analysis showed that the daily experience of job demands in the prior week led to an increment of emotional exhaustion in the following week. Interestingly, the interaction role of PSC*psychological detachment and PSC*relaxation moderated the relationship between daily job demands and daily emotional exhaustion. Overall, this study highlights the importance of individual off-job recovery time and that building good PSC at work is fundamental in compensating for the adverse relationships between job demands and its consequences.

The effect of job demands on health and work outcomes: A longitudinal study among Malaysian employees.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of job demands on health and work outcomes among Malaysian workers. We hypothesized that job demands (i.e., emotional demands and physical demands) would predict future work-related burnout and work engagement, in turn affecting sleep problems and job performance (in-role, extra-role). A longitudinal two-wave survey was conducted among Malaysian workers and valid data from 345 participants were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results revealed that work-related burnout predicts sleep problems while work engagement increased employees' job performance over time. Overall, the current study highlights the importance of specific job demands (i.e., emotional demands and physical demands) that specifically affect health-related behavior and work-related behavior among workers.

The role of psychological detachment in burnout and depression: A longitudinal study of Malaysian workers.

The current study aimed to examine the role of psychological detachment in the relationship between working conditions and burnout and depression. First, the study proposed that job demands would increase burnout after four months but not depression. Second, it proposed that psychological detachment would moderate the impact of job demands and job resources on burnout and depression. Third, it was proposed that the interaction between job demands, job resources and psychological detachment would predict burnout and depression. The longitudinal study design involved 345 workers (at both Time 1 and Time 2). The hierarchical regression analysis showed that increasing psychological detachment reduced the negative relationship between physical demands and depression four months later. In contrast, high psychological detachment increased the negative association between emotional resources and burnout, but not between emotional resources and depression. Overall, this study, in its discovery of the impact of working conditions on psychological health, has made a new contribution to psychological detachment studies by using different sub-constructs of job demands and job resources (i.e., emotional and physical) with four-month gaps, as previous studies did not address the impact within this time frame.

Benchmarking working conditions for health and safety in the frontline healthcare industry: Perspectives from Australia and Malaysia.

AIM: To present benchmarks for working conditions in healthcare industries as an initial effort into international surveillance. BACKGROUND: The healthcare industry is fundamental to sustaining the health of Australians, yet it is under immense pressure. Budgets are limited, demands are increasing as are workplace injuries and all of these factors compromise patient care. Urgent attention is needed to reduce strains on workers and costs in health care, however, little work has been done to benchmark psychosocial factors in healthcare working conditions in the Asia-Pacific. Intercultural comparisons are important to provide an evidence base for public policy. DESIGN: A cross-sectional design was used (like other studies of prevalence), including a mixed-methods approach with qualitative interviews to better contextualize the results. METHODS: Data on psychosocial factors and other work variables were collected from healthcare workers in three hospitals in Australia (N = 1,258) and Malaysia (N = 1,125). 2015 benchmarks were calculated for each variable and comparison was conducted via independent samples t tests. Healthcare samples were also compared with benchmarks for non-healthcare general working populations from their respective countries: Australia (N = 973) and Malaysia (N = 225). FINDINGS: Our study benchmarks healthcare working conditions in Australia and Malaysia against the general working population, identifying trends that indicate the industry is in need of intervention strategies and job redesign initiatives that better support psychological health and safety. CONCLUSION: We move toward a better understanding of the precursors of psychosocial safety climate in a broader context, including similarities and differences between Australia and Malaysia in national culture, government occupational health and safety policies and top-level management practices.

Psychosocial safety climate, emotional demands, burnout, and depression: a longitudinal multilevel study in the Malaysian private sector.

This multilevel longitudinal study investigates a newly identified climate construct, psychosocial safety climate (PSC), as a precursor to job characteristics (e.g., emotional demands), and psychological outcomes (i.e., emotional exhaustion and depression). We argued that PSC, as an organizational climate construct, has cross-level effects on individually perceived job design and psychological outcomes. We hypothesized a mediation process between PSC and emotional exhaustion particularly through emotional demands. In sequence, we predicted that emotional exhaustion would predict depression. At Time 1, data were collected from employees in 36 Malaysian private sector organizations (80% responses rate), n = 253 (56%), and at Time 2 from 27 organizations (60%) and n = 117 (46%). Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we found that there were cross-level effects of PSC Time 1 on emotional demands Time 2 and emotional exhaustion Time 2, but not on depression Time 2, across a 3-month time lag. We found evidence for a lagged mediated effect; emotional demands mediated the relationship between PSC and emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion did not predict depression. Finally, our results suggest that PSC is an important organizational climate construct, and acts to reduce employee psychological problems in the workplace, via working conditions.

The effect of globalization on employee psychological health and job satisfaction in Malaysian workplaces.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of globalization on employee psychological health and job satisfaction via job characteristics (i.e., job demands and job resources) in an emerging economy, that of Malaysia. As external factors are regarded as influences on the working environment, we hypothesized that global forces (increased pressure and competition) would have an impact on burnout and job satisfaction via increased demands (role conflict, emotional demands) and reduced resources (supervisor support, coworkers support). METHODS: Data were collected using a population based survey among 308 employees in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. Participants were approached at home during the weekend or on days off from work. Only one participant was selected per household. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. Nearly 54% of respondents agreed that they need to work harder, 25% agreed that their job was not secure and 24% thought they had lost power and control on the job due to global trade competition. RESULTS: Consistent with our predictions, demands mediated the globalization to burnout relationship, and resources mediated the globalization to job satisfaction relationship. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these results support the idea that external factors influence work conditions and in turn employee health and job satisfaction. We conclude that the jobs demands-resources framework is applicable in an Eastern setting and that globalization is a key antecedent of working environments.