Psychosocial safety climate: A lead indicator of workplace psychological health and engagement and a precursor to intervention success
Date
2012
Authors
Dollard, M.F.
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Journal article
Citation
2012; 77-101
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Abstract
Introduction Work-related stress is increasingly recognized as a central occupational health and safety (OHS) issue in many organizations, with the potential to have a significant detrimental impact on employees’ health, psychological well-being and work effectiveness. Interventions to address work-related stress are increasing but are mainly secondary, targeting the skills, perceptions and beliefs of individual workers, or tertiary, focusing on treating injured workers (Caulfield et al., 2004; Giga et al., 2003; Jordan et al., 2003). By comparison interventions at the organizational level have been largely ignored (Leka, Cox, and Zwetsloot, 2008). This is not too surprising and follows both theoretical and empirical trends in the area that focus on task level psychosocial factors and individual factors rather than organizational factors as causal stress agents (Kang et al., 2008). However there is growing evidence that causes of work stress may be more distal than is commonly assumed, emerging from the organizational context (e.g., climate; organizational structure) or extra-organizational factors (Van Den Bossche, Smulders, and Houtman, 2006). In accord with the logic of a hierarchy of causes, for greatest effect it is imperative to tackle causes at the highest levels. Therefore there is an urgent need to develop and apply multi-level theory to inform primary prevention approaches so that interventions may address the true source of the problem.