Workplace social capital and risk of chronic and severe hypertension: a cohort study

Objective: The association between workplace factors and the development of hypertension remains uncertain. We examined the risk of hypertension as a function of workplace social capital, that is, social cohesion, trust and reciprocity in the workplace.

Implementation of workplace-based smoking cessation support activities and smoking cessation among employees:the Finnish Public Sector Study

We investigated the relationship between implementation of workplace smoking cessation support activities and employee smoking cessation.

Workplace social capital and all-cause mortality:a prospective cohort study of 28,043 public-sector employees in Finland

We examined the association between workplace social capital and all-cause mortality in a large occupational cohort from Finland.

The justice-workplace health relationship:The mediating role of emotions

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediational effects of positive and negative emotions in the relationship between organisational justice and health. Design/methodology/approach - This cross-sectional research obtained data from 206 workers employed within the financial/banking, manufacturing, and retail industries in Barbados. Findings - Structural equation modelling analyses revealed that positive and negative emotions completely mediated the effects of relational justice (but not procedural justice) on overall health. Research limitations/implications - Research was cross-sectional, and relied on self-report measures. The findings suggest that employers must properly evaluate their health and safety policies and practices in the organisation to ensure that aspects of the psychosocial work environment are being properly implemented, managed, and monitored, to ensure that individuals' health and well-being are not at risk. Originality/value - The paper represents a first attempt to investigate the roles of positive and negative emotions in the justice-health relationship in a different cultural context such as the Caribbean. Justice has been rarely researched as a psychosocial work stressor. The study described in the paper focused on multiple health outcomes. Copyright © 2012 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.

Procurement and Fairness in the Workplace

Public procurement is a potential lever for ensuring greater attention is given to ensuring minimum standards and effective employment rights in the workplace. Public sector purchasers may encourage or require private sector employers from whom they buy to adopt a proactive approach to ensuring fairness at work, focusing on organisational changes that the employer could make. This chapter explores whether and how far public procurement does, or could, influence whether – and how much – employment rights have an impact on employer policy and practice. It considers what public procurement offers as a strategy and what factors help to determine its effectiveness.

Do obesity and sleep problems cluster in the workplace?:A multivariate, multilevel study

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the co-occurrence of obesity and sleep problems among employees and workplaces. METHODS: We obtained data from 39 873 men and women working in 3040 workplaces in 2000-2002 (the Finnish Public Sector Study). Individual- and workplace-level characteristics were considered as correlates of obesity and sleep problems, which were modelled simultaneously using a multivariate, multilevel approach. RESULTS: Of the participants, 11% were obese and 23% reported sleep problems. We found a correlation between obesity and sleep problems at both the individual [correlation coefficient 0.048, covariance 0.047, standard error (SE) 0.005) and workplace (correlation coefficient 0.619, covariance 0.068, SE 0.011) level. The latter, but not the former, correlation remained after adjustment for individual- and workplace-level confounders, such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, shift work, alcohol consumption, job strain, and proportion of temporary employees and manual workers at the workplace. CONCLUSIONS: Obese employees and those with sleep problems tend to cluster in the same workplaces, suggesting that, in addition to targeting individuals at risk, interventions to reduce obesity and sleep problems might benefit from identifying "risky" workplaces.

Chronic workplace stress and insufficient physical activity: a cohort study

Objectives To examine whether exposure to workplace stressors predicts changes in physical activity and the risk of insufficient physical activity.

Methods Prospective data from the Finnish Public Sector Study. Repeated exposure to low job control, high job demands, low effort, low rewards and compositions of these (job strain and effort-reward imbalance) were assessed at Time 1 (2000-2002) and Time 2 (2004). Insufficient physical activity (<14 metabolic equivalent task hours per week) was measured at Time 1 and Time 3 (2008). The effect of change in workplace stressors on change in physical activity was examined using fixed-effects (within-subject) logistic regression models (N=6665). In addition, logistic regression analysis was applied to examine the associations between repeated exposure to workplace stressors and insufficient physical activity (N=13 976). In these analyses, coworker assessed workplace stressor scores were used in addition to individual level scores.

Results The proportion of participants with insufficient physical activity was 24% at baseline and 26% at follow-up. 19% of the participants who were sufficiently active at baseline became insufficiently active at follow-up. In the fixed-effect analysis, an increase in workplace stress was weakly related to an increase in physical inactivity within an individual. In between-subjects analysis, employees with repeated exposure to low job control and low rewards were more likely to be insufficiently active at follow-up than those with no reports of these stressors; fully adjusted ORs ranged from 1.11 (95% CI 1.00 to 1.24) to 1.21 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.39).

Conclusions Workplace stress is associated with a slightly increased risk of physical inactivity.

Workplace social capital and adherence to antihypertensive medication:a cohort study

While hypertension is a common and treatable health problem, adherence to antihypertensive medication remains a challenge. This study examines the hypothesis that workplace social capital may influence adherence to antihypertensive medication among hypertensive employees.

Workplace determinants of social capital:cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from a finnish cohort study

To examine which contextual features of the workplace are associated with social capital.

A lesson in business: cost-effectiveness analysis of a novel financial incentive intervention for increasing physical activity in the workplace

Background: Recently both the UK and US governments have advocated the use of financial incentives to encourage healthier lifestyle choices but evidence for the cost-effectiveness of such interventions is lacking. Our aim was to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of a quasi-experimental trial, exploring the use of financial incentives to increase employee physical activity levels, from a healthcare and employer’s perspective.

Methods: Employees used a ‘loyalty card’ to objectively monitor their physical activity at work over 12 weeks. The Incentive Group (n=199) collected points and received rewards for minutes of physical activity completed. The No Incentive Group (n=207) self-monitored their physical activity only. Quality of life (QOL) and absenteeism were assessed at baseline and 6 months follow-up. QOL scores were also converted into productivity estimates using a validated algorithm. The additional costs of the Incentive Group were divided by the additional quality adjusted life years (QALYs) or productivity gained to calculate incremental cost effectiveness ratios (ICERs). Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves (CEACs) and population expected value of perfect information (EVPI) was used to characterize and value the uncertainty in our estimates.

Results: The Incentive Group performed more physical activity over 12 weeks and by 6 months had achieved greater gains in QOL and productivity, although these mean differences were not statistically significant. The ICERs were £2,900/QALY and £2,700 per percentage increase in overall employee productivity. Whilst the confidence intervals surrounding these ICERs were wide, CEACs showed a high chance of the intervention being cost-effective at low willingness-to-pay (WTP) thresholds.

Conclusions: The Physical Activity Loyalty card (PAL) scheme is potentially cost-effective from both a healthcare and employer’s perspective but further research is warranted to reduce uncertainty in our results. It is based on a sustainable “business model” which should become more cost-effective as it is delivered to more participants and can be adapted to suit other health behaviors and settings. This comes at a time when both UK and US governments are encouraging business involvement in tackling public health challenges.

The prospective effects of workplace violence on physicians' job satisfaction and turnover intentions: the buffering effect of job control

Background: Health care professionals, including physicians, are at high risk of encountering workplace violence. At the same time physician turnover is an increasing problem that threatens the functioning of the health care sector worldwide. The present study examined the prospective associations of work-related physical violence and bullying with physicians’ turnover intentions and job satisfaction. In addition, we tested whether job control would modify these associations.

Methods: The present study was a 4-year longitudinal survey study, with data gathered in 2006 and 2010.The present sample included 1515 (61% women) Finnish physicians aged 25–63 years at baseline. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were conducted while adjusting for gender, age, baseline levels, specialisation status, and employment sector.

Results: The results of covariance analyses showed that physical violence led to increased physician turnover intentions and that both bullying and physical violence led to reduced physician job satisfaction even after adjustments. We also found that opportunities for job control were able to alleviate the increase in turnover intentions resulting from bullying.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that workplace violence is an extensive problem in the health care sector and may lead to increased turnover and job dissatisfaction. Thus, health care organisations should approach this problem through different means, for example, by giving health care employees more opportunities to control their own work.

Successful but Unappealing: Fifteen Years of Workplace Partnership in Ireland:Special Issue: Partnership, Collaboration and Mutual Gains

This paper presents the first comprehensive review and assessment of Ireland's influential 15-year experiment with workplace partnership. The paper reviews the outcomes of workplace partnership and explains the limited adoption of partnership in the private and public sectors, drawing on the authors' experiences as participants in policy initiatives concerned with promoting partnership in the workplace. Although the promotion of partnership was to the fore in public policy between the late 1990s to the onset of the recession and successful outcomes were reported for the main stakeholders where partnerships were established, the paper explains why the concept nevertheless remained largely unappealing across the private and public sectors.