The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has performed important functions related to the protection and promotion of the safety and health of the United States workforce for over five decades, including those related to research, education, and consultation with employers and other stakeholders. The present study explores the relationships between the level of federal investment in occupational safety and health infrastructure, operationalized as the annual NIOSH budget, and occupational injury rates, occupational fatality rates, and workforce productivity. Using archival data collected from publicly available sources including federal budget appropriations, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we applied the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to examine both concurrent and lagged effects. We found support for a relatively short-term relationship between the annual NIOSH budget and occupational injuries, as increases in budget were associated with reductions in injury rates within around three years’ time. A non-monotonic relationship between annual budget and fatalities paints a more complex picture, with decreases observed initially at one year not being sustained. Finally, there was no relationship between the annual budget and workforce occupational injuries, with reductions in injury rates occurring around two years’ time, bolstering the argument that investments in workforce safety and health do not come at the expense of a productive workforce. Both the history and future of the occupational safety and health authority are discussed in the context of these findings.
Helping colleagues is a behavior that is common in the workplace and highly relevant for organizational effectiveness. The consequences of helping for the helper is an emerging field of research with mixed findings. Taking the potentially differential nature of reactive and proactive help into account, the present study focuses on the social consequences of help for helpers. Drawing on theory that highlights the fundamental human need to belong as central to psychological functioning, we propose that reactive help positively affects individuals’ sense of relatedness and, subsequently, affective organizational commitment, whereas the effect of proactive help depends on a characteristic of the helping exchange. Specifically, we propose that the level of perceived acceptance of the proactive help shapes the extent to which proactive help may contribute to or impair the sense of relatedness. We tested our model with a daily diary study (n = 110; k = 508) with four daily measures (before work, morning, afternoon, end of day). Multilevel path analyses support the proposed positive effect of reactive help on evening organizational commitment, mediated through afternoon experience of relatedness. The effect of proactive help depended on the extent to which helpers perceived that their help was accepted by the recipients of their help. This research underscores the distinct nature of reactive and proactive help, highlighting how helping may either support or hinder individuals to feel connected to their workplace.
Anti-work attitudes, characterized by a generalized rejection of work as a source of personal or societal worth, have gained increasing attention in recent years, particularly in the wake of shifting labor market conditions and growing online discourse. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework, this preregistered study (N = 2240) examined how specific job demands (e.g., job insecurity, illegitimate tasks, work-life conflict) and job resources (social community, social capital) relate to anti-work orientation among Swedish employees. Structural equation modeling revealed that job insecurity, lack of work-life balance, and illegitimate work tasks were significantly associated with stronger anti-work orientation, whereas job resources showed no significant relationships with anti-work orientation. Job insecurity and perceived lack of job quality further showed indirect associations with anti-work attitudes through frustration; however, there were no indirect associations through well-being. These findings suggest that anti-work attitudes are closely related to experiences of strain and perceived illegitimacy in the workplace, rather than being purely ideological, and highlight the importance of further examining the impact of job conditions on anti-work sentiments.
Stigma, i.e., negative social attitudes linked to mental health issues, may hinder help-seeking among healthcare workers. This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the 11-item Stigma of Occupational Stress Scale for doctors (SOSS-D) to the Swedish context, and to evaluate its psychometric properties among doctors, registered nurses, and nurse assistants in Sweden. In addition, criterion-related validity was examined by assessing associations between the SOSS-D and self-rated burnout. SOSS-D was translated using back-translation with a monolingual test, and culturally adapted through focus group interviews. The Swedish version was subsequently validated among healthcare workers using the 2023 Longitudinal Occupational Health survey of Healthcare in Sweden (LOHHCS), including a representative sample of doctors (n = 7,780), registered nurses (n = 7,790), and nurse assistants (n = 7,748). Confirmatory factor analyses and exploratory structural equation modelling were used to ascertain the most valid factor structure for the data. The statistical validation resulted in a 9-item scale with sub-dimensions: structural (3 items), personal (3 items), and other (3 items) stigma, extending the SOSS-D to include all healthcare workers, i.e., the SOSS-HCW. The dimensions correlated with one another (r = 0.21–0.47, p < 0.001), and all three were significantly associated with higher levels of burnout (β = 0.09–0.35, p < 0.001). The SOSS-HCW demonstrates satisfactory structural and criterion-related validity in a Swedish healthcare context and can be used to investigate occupational stress stigma and its potential role as a barrier to help-seeking among healthcare workers.
Patient/visitor incivility, defined as low-intensity behavior from patients or visitors, is an underrecognized yet pervasive psychosocial stressor in healthcare. Despite growing attention to this issue, brief, validated instruments for assessing patient/visitor incivility in Italian hospital settings, across both clinical and administrative roles, remain lacking. To provide an initial psychometric evaluation of the Italian version of the Short-Form Patient/Visitor Incivility Scale, yielding a concise tool for organizational assessment and prevention. Hospital workers from eight hospitals in Northern Italy completed the Short-Form Patient/Visitor Incivility Scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses assessed the factorial structure, reliability, and construct validity. Measurement invariance across gender, age, tenure, and occupational role was tested. Correlations tested nomological and divergent validity. Analyses confirmed a unidimensional four-item structure with excellent reliability. Patient/visitor incivility was positively associated with patient/visitor aggression, workload, and emotional exhaustion, and negatively associated with job satisfaction and self-esteem. A weak inverse relation with perceived recognition confirmed divergent validity. Residual measurement invariance was supported for gender, tenure, and role, while partial residual invariance was supported for age. Small subgroup differences indicated somewhat higher exposure among nurses, women, and younger employees, whereas administrative staff reported exposure levels comparable to those of clinical personnel. The Italian Short-Form Patient/Visitor Incivility Scale provides a brief, valid measure for assessing patient/visitor incivility in heterogeneous hospital workforces, supporting early identification, targeted prevention, and organization-wide monitoring.
This paper explores global best practices on workplace psychosocial risk management policies by examining related international policies through qualitative directed content analysis (DCA). This analysis aims to assess alignment of the available international policies with the Five Essentials framework issued by the United States (U.S.) Surgeon General, and to inform the possible development of a domestic U.S. policy. Six international policies on psychosocial risk management were identified using purposive, criterion sampling, and were analyzed using grounded theory methodology (GTM) to identify key themes. Six themes emerged from the analysis: (1) driving factors, (2) critical organizational needs assessment, (3) psychosocial risk assessment, (4) worker voice, (5) continuous improvement, and (6) practical implementation. Comparing these themes with the U.S. Surgeon General’s framework revealed general alignment with some gaps. Specifically, while both this analysis and the Five Essentials framework emphasize a worker-centered approach, the domestic framework lacks practical implementation strategies found in several international policies. This study underscores the importance of incorporating worker-centric approaches and practical tools into a future U.S. standard. A potential limitation is bias toward alignment with the existing U.S. Surgeon General’s framework, possibly resulting in overemphasizing its components. Yet, use of both deductive (DCA) and inductive (GTM) analytic approaches was a strength and likely served to minimize such bias. The current study provides timely insights for domestic psychosocial risk management policy development in the U.S. and suggests avenues for future interpretative policy analysis research.
As technology becomes increasingly embedded in the modern workplace, understanding its psychological effects on employees is critical for reducing work-family conflict (WFC). This study investigates how technostressors—specifically, techno-overload and techno-invasion—are associated with WFC through psychological detachment. Drawing on the Stressor Detachment Model (SDM), this study also examines attentional resources as a moderating factor in the detachment process. Using a multi-wave design, the findings reveal that both techno-overload and techno-invasion are significantly associated with higher levels of WFC. Notably, psychological detachment mediates the relationship between techno-invasion and WFC, but not between techno-overload and WFC. Furthermore, attentional resources moderate the indirect effects of techno-invasion on WFC, such that individuals with lower attentional resources experience greater difficulty detaching from work, intensifying the influence of technostressors on WFC. Supplemental analyses reveal that these patterns vary across time-based, strain-based, and behavior-based forms of WFC. Together, these results refine the theoretical development of the SDM by identifying low-attentional resources as a vulnerability factor and highlight the need for organizations to consider both technological job demands and employee cognitive capacities when developing strategies to support work-life balance in digitally demanding work environments.
Attachment style, as a relatively stable personality trait, plays a significant role in explaining employees’ psychological and behavioral responses in the workplace. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the mechanisms through which employee attachment styles influence emotional exhaustion, including a potential mediator and the boundary conditions moderating these effects. Quantitative data were collected from 338 employees using a two-wave survey of employees across various industries in China. SPSS and AMOS were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. The analysis reveals that both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety significantly exacerbate emotional exhaustion through the mediation of leader–member exchange. Furthermore, a supportive organizational climate mitigates the impact of leader–member exchange on emotional exhaustion and weakens the indirect effect of attachment style on emotional exhaustion through leader–member exchange. These findings provide nuanced insights into the interplay among attachment styles, workplace relationships, and employee well-being in the specific organizational environment of China. The study also offers actionable recommendations for organizations to promote employees’ psychological health and work quality, including fostering supportive organizational climates and enhancing leader–member exchange.
This study examined benevolent sexism frequency in the workplace, an underexplored aspect of subtle gender discrimination. While prior research has demonstrated the negative effects of exposure to benevolently sexist discrimination from a single source and experimental manipulations, little is known about how often employees encounter benevolent sexism and the consequences of repeated exposure. Drawing on the minority stress model, we hypothesized that benevolent sexism frequency would be positively associated with job stress and turnover intentions, and that job stress would mediate this relationship. Using cross-sectional survey data from 212 employed women, results supported all hypotheses; benevolent sexism frequency was directly and indirectly, through job stress, related to turnover intentions. These findings extend the literature on benevolent sexism by highlighting the importance of frequency as a workplace stressor. Theoretical implications for gender dynamics and employee well-being are discussed.
Artificial Intelligence technologies (AI) are rapidly transforming the nature of jobs and work. While much of the discussion around AI concerns its capabilities, this set of compiled commentaries argues that AI also has profound implications for workers’ health, safety, and well-being. The commentaries explore these implications across a range of topics, including technostress, human health, flourishing, job and occupational insecurity, algorithmic management, ethics, and training needs for future occupational safety and health professionals. Together, the commentaries suggest that AI’s potential impacts are neither inherent nor inevitable. In a world where AI’s effects are still a consequence of human decisions, the frameworks and values of occupational health psychology hold promise for understanding and shaping a future of work where worker health, safety, and well-being are paramount.
Based on the Work-Home Resources model, the present study examines how flexibility i-deals (idiosyncratic deals) are associated with employees’ caregiver-recipient relationship quality and consequently their work performance. Further, this study examined the crossover effect of flexibility i-deals on an important family outcome (i.e., spouse-rated relationship conflict) through caregiver-recipient relationship quality and positive crossover transmission. Finally, employees’ eldercare burden was tested as an important boundary condition of the relationship between flexibility i-deals and caregiver-recipient relationship quality. Using a three-wave time-lagged design, Study 1 (N = 149 American employees with informal eldercare responsibilities) found that flexibility i-deals were positively related with focal employees’ work performance (i.e., higher in-role task performance and lower counterproductive work behaviors) through caregiver-recipient relationship quality. Study 2 further tested the overall research model in a matched sample of 313 Chinese employees with eldercare responsibilities and their spouses. We found that flexibility i-deals were indirectly related with employees’ work performance through caregiver-recipient relationship quality. Further, we found that flexibility i-deals were indirectly related with the spouse-rated relationship conflict with the focal employee through caregiver-recipient relationship quality and positive crossover transmission. However, eldercare burden did not significantly moderate the relationship between flexibility i-deals and caregiver-recipient relationship quality. Theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Psychological research has been criticized for its lack of methodological transparency and representativeness. However, the interrelated nature of reporting and representation issues, and their manifestation in occupational health research specifically, remains undocumented. In this review, we coded sample characteristic- and reporting-related information from all occupational health-relevant studies published between 2010 and 2025 in four leading occupational health journals: the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Occupational Health Science, Stress Health, and Work Stress. We sought to answer two research questions: 1) how representative are samples of global and/or national population characteristics; and 2) how well do researchers adhere to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) reporting standards when writing about these samples and their research therewith? Informed by 28 sample- and sampling-relevant APA Journal Article Reporting Standards for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies, we coded information from included articles (Nmanuscripts = 1,296; Nstudies = 1,607; Nparticipants = 1,630,146) regarding whether certain sample or study attributes (e.g., demographics, contextual setting) and methodological or analytical decisions (e.g., sampling, missing data procedures) were reported, as well as what was reported and in what format. Results empirically document many forms of underreporting (e.g., participant race, socioeconomic status), underrepresentation (e.g., gender minorities, non-Western nations), and overrepresentation or selection bias (i.e., the “privileged worker effect”), as well as areas for standardization, modernization, and clarification to improve occupational health science and its applications. Recommendations for researchers and editors/reviewers, as well as considerations for theory, research, training, measurement, practice, and policy, are presented.
Despite the prevalence of incivility at work and the essential nature of sleep, study of this relationship is comparatively sparse in the organizational sciences literature. Further, although impaired sleep could logically impact how one interprets subsequent interpersonal interactions at work, the dominant approach is to study sleep as an outcome of perceived incivility. Therefore, we drew upon affective events theory, the affect-as-information hypothesis, and sleep physiology to argue that state affect, both positive and negative, can explain the relationship between perceived incivility and sleep quality in either direction. The hypotheses were tested using a between-subjects design with one-month time lags and employees recruited from Prolific (Study 1) and a within-subjects design with daily assessments and employees recruited from Mturk (Study2). Across both studies, the findings indicated consistent direct effects, wherein perceived incivility was related to poorer affect (i.e., higher NA, lower PA), while sleep quality was related to improved affect (i.e., lower NA, higher PA). Regarding indirect effects, PA mediated the incivility→sleep relationship in Study 1, whereas NA mediated the incivility→sleep relationship in Study 2. We expand upon the implications of these findings and directions for future research.
Work stress remains a persistent threat to employee health, yet little is known about how individuals’ preventative health behaviors (PHBs) outside of work buffer its long-term effects. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we examine whether five PHBs—nutrition, exercise, sleep quality, alcohol use, and smoking frequency—moderate the relationship between work stress and general health. We conceptualize PHBs as proactive resource investments that may substitute for threatened or depleted resources and, conceptually, as components of a broader “resource caravan” that can sustain resilience under chronic stress. Using ten years of data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (N = 2,871), we estimated multilevel growth curve models in a working sample. Nutrition, sleep quality, and alcohol use moderated the negative associates between work stress and general health, with sleep quality emerging as the strongest buffer. Exercise and smoking frequency did not moderate the stress–health relationship when modeled alongside the other PHBs. In addition, better nutrition and sleep quality, more frequent exercise, and lower alcohol use were associated with better general health overall, whereas smoking frequency showed a weaker association. These findings extend COR theory by identifying specific health behaviors that conditionally protect health under prolonged work stress and highlight the potential value of targeted non-work interventions that support personal resource maintenance, particularly when structural changes to work are limited or slow to implement.
This study investigated the intricate dynamic relationships between work engagement, mental health, and work performance among employees. Given the potential reciprocal influence between work engagement and mental health, their reciprocal effects were firstly examined in Study 1 using a cross-lagged panel model with a three-wave longitudinal design among 369 Chinese employees. Subsequently, in Study 2, the mediating role of mental health in the relationship between work engagement and work performance was explored utilizing a 1-1-1 multilevel structural equation model within a 15-day diary study involving 62 Chinese employees. Findings of Study 1 revealed consistent positive effects of work engagement on subsequent mental health and findings of Study 2 demonstrated that work engagement acted as an antecedent of both mental health and work performance at both within-person and between-person levels. Notably, mental health was found mediating the impact of work engagement on work performance at the within-person level. In terms of future research and interventions on enhancing work performance, our study findings underscored the importance of fostering work engagement and mental health to enhance employee work performance.
Various measures have been employed to assess anxiety within the occupational context. To date, these measures have not been comprehensively inventoried, making it challenging for stakeholders to identify the tools that best suit their needs and to detect measurement gaps requiring attention. The present study reviewed measures of occupational anxiety used since 1980—the year anxiety disorders were formally introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The literature search was conducted in PsycINFO, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Web of Science. Best practice guidelines from the JBI and PRISMA-ScR frameworks were applied. From an initial pool of 969 records, 216 studies qualified for review. A total of 52 measures of occupational anxiety were identified. The measures differed greatly in design (e.g., length) and scope (e.g., single versus multiple type[s] of anxiety) as well as in the sources of anxiety under scrutiny (e.g., job performance, workplace safety, digitalization of work). Cutoffs intended to flag workers with elevated levels of anxiety accompanied 19.2
As the most proximal agent of the organization, an individual’s workplace leader can have a significant impact on employee health. From both a theoretical and practical perspective, the impact one’s leader has on an individual’s health behaviors (e.g., dietary choices) may be a key mechanism in the broader search for addressing work’s impact on employee health. Through the lens of self-regulation resource theory and the cybernetic model of personality, this study explores the association between daily leader behaviors (initiating structure and consideration) and follower nighttime eating behaviors. Specifically, we test the role of positive affect as a mediator of these relationships, and personality traits (extraversion and conscientiousness) as potential moderators of the link between afterwork affect and nighttime eating. Results of a 10-day experience sampling study with 67 full-time employed participants, analyzed using multilevel path analysis, suggest that on days when leaders are perceived as engaging in higher levels of initiating structure, followers experience higher positive affect. In turn, this positive affect, a self-regulation resource, is associated with a lower likelihood of eating calorically-dense foods, especially for individuals who are low in extraversion and conscientiousness. These findings serve to integrate leadership research with individual differences research through the lens of occupational health psychology. Moreover, they hold clear implications for self-regulation interventions and highlight an additional benefit of high-quality leadership.
Recovery experiences are important for many health and well-being outcomes. One potential threat to an individual’s recovery experiences in the workplace is psychological climate for overwork. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between psychological climate for overwork and recovery experiences. Using a multi-wave research design (N = 202), we found that psychological climate for overwork had direct effects on psychological detachment and indirect effects on psychological detachment and relaxation through cognitive workaholism and work-recovery guilt. These results suggest that psychological climate for overwork may contribute to an individual’s experience of cognitive workaholism and work-recovery guilt, and that these mediators, along with psychological climate for overwork, may be threats to recovery experiences.
Psychosocial hazards in the workplace are gaining global attention, with many jurisdictions introducing regulatory frameworks and guidelines. However, little is known about how these are implemented in practice, particularly across different business sizes. This cross-sectional online survey of 217 NSW businesses, completed by business representatives, most of whom self-identified as key Work Health and Safety (WHS) decision makers (67.3
Workers hold multiple roles within and across life domains in contemporary work settings. Role theory suggests these roles can either interfere with each other (role strain) or provide mutual benefits (role gain), but these perspectives are typically studied separately. We integrate both by proposing a dual-path model, arguing that holding more roles can simultaneously lead to greater benefits and interferences. Drawing on role integration and temporal literature, we introduce role occurrence proximity—the extent to which roles occur closely in time—as a key moderator that amplifies both strain and gain. Using a two-wave time-lagged survey of 202 participants, we found that the number of roles held is positively related to role gain, especially when roles occur in close temporal proximity. Contrary to expectations, we did not find significant relationships between the number of roles and role strain, regardless of role occurrence proximity. These findings suggest that multiple roles foster gain rather than strain, and that temporal patterns of role engagement shape how workers experience the benefits of their multiple roles. Supplementary analyses further revealed that, among others, role strain emerged specifically when work and nonwork roles overlap in the late morning and late evening, suggesting that it is episodic. All in all, this research extends role theory by highlighting how proximity and temporal patterns of role occurrence shape the consequences of holding multiple roles.
