Week 13 - Workplace Wellness Flashcards
(35 cards)
Snoozing on the Job
- Not getting enough sleep is associated with hypertension, heart disease, and depression.
- Evidence
- Afternoon naps associated with lesser risk for coronary mortality.
- Short naps (<30 min) associated with better alertness and performance.
- Nap rooms/pods introduced
Workplace Wellness Initiatives: Prevalence
- active attempts should be made to ensure a healthy and safe work environment
- 90% of American companies with more than 200 employees offer health-related programs
- Canadian companies offer a range of wellness programs. Examples include
vaccination programs, nutrition, fitness, weight control, or stress management
support.
Canada versus USA
- public healthcare - less of a financial impetus to develop employee health initiatives (but is shifting)
Work-Family Conflict / Family-Friendly Policies in the Workplace
- inter-role conflict whee pressures in the work and family domains are incompatible
- costly for organizations: associated with reduced work performance and increased absenteeism
- costly for individuals: perceived stress, poorer physical health, decreased family functioning and increased alcohol use
Reduced Time in Workplace: Flexible Work Arrangements
compressed workweek: full-time hours in fewer days/weel
job splitting: 2 people divide the responsbilities of a job (e.g., admin versus front facing tasks
job sharing: two people share the responsibilities of a job (e.g., different days)
Increase Control of Schedule
Flextime: employees to have variable start and finish work times, want to ensure some common hours for team-related tasks
Flexplace: aka telecommuting, remote work, work-from home
Remote Work: Pro’s
- Large-scale implementation during the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Canadian Scoping Review of 65 academic papers:
– Some positive effects: - Greater work-life balance satisfaction
- Reduced work-family conflict
- Reduced experiences of stress and/or strain
- Improved well-being
- Improved psychological well-being (dependent on age and
adaptability)
Remote Work: Cons
– Increased loneliness and social isolation
– Anxiety and nervousness
– Depression, mood drop and negative feelings/emotions
– Increased experiences of stress and or strain; mental overload,
time pressure (especially with no schedule)
– Burnout and emotional exhaustion, lack of boundaries between
work and family (can be made better or worse with family and
work social support)
– Increased work-family conflict (particularly for women)
– Reduced psychological well-being
Personal Leave Systems
– Maternity leave & Parental leave (min 1 year with portion
of regular earnings through EI program)
– Personal days
– Family leave
– Sick leave
– Bereavement leave
Family Care Benefits
Examples:
- Daycare benefits (e.g., on site, nearby)
- eldercare benefits (stipend)
Research often inconclusive, but meta-analytic evidence suggests modest positive effects (but not always)
– E.g., flex time makes people feel in control of their work but did not actually reduce work-family conflict, in some may increase
Organizational outcomes
– Flexible work options have positive effects on job satisfaction and performance, decreased intentions to quit, improved commitment
– ROI: $1.68 for every $1 invested in family-friendly programs
Availability of family-friendly programs versus employee uptake of these programs? Can people actually use them?
- some feel that using certain policies (e.g., flextime) will face stigma or negative repercussions on their career progress
- organizational support of inititiaves can help to improve uptake
Health Promotion
- combination of diganostic, educational and behavioural modificationa ctivities designed to support attainment and maintenance of positive health
Wellness in Small Business
- reasonable effort for small businesses
- absent or lower-performing workers can have a substantial impact
- research supports the argument that wellness programs in small workplaces can thrive and carry substantial benefits for employees and employers
–> presence of a wellness champion, leveraging tight-knit coheisve nature of employee base can help
bring in a wellness consultant
More diverse programs offering seen now
- Management trained some workers to listen to worker’s problems to reduce interference in productivity
- 1920 – 1/3 of the 431 largest companies in the USA had a
full-time welfare secretary (counselling role) - 1940’s – Occupational Alcohol Movement (direct precursor to
EFAP’s) – alcoholism recognized as serious workplace issue,
counseling provided - 1970’s – period of rapid expansion of EFAP’s
- 1980’s – inclusion of stress management
EFAPs
– Provide counselling and assistance to
employees and their family members
with problems that may interfere with
worker productivity such as:
* Alcohol and other drug abuse
- services are accesible and confidential
- now subsumed into modern health promotion programs focusing on
- stress management
- lifestyle programming
Primary Intervention Level
prevention
– Focuses on preventing the causes of stress, such as reducing work overload, improving communication, and
increasing participation in decision-making.
Secondary Intervention Level
helping employees deal with the situation
– Focuses on helping employees deal with the situation, such as by providing coping skills, employee fitness
programs, and job redesign.
Teritary Intervention Level
IMPROVING well being AFTER employees have been made ill by their work
focuses on improving the well-being of employees who have been made ill by their work, such as by providing counseling, employee assistance programs and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy
Stress Management Programs
- cognitive-behavioural skills training
- relaxation training, meditation, and mindfulness
- increasing social support
Stress Management Programs
- more comprehensive studies are needed to gauge effectiveness
- cognitive behavioural interventuons are most effective
- helps people to think about events in new ways and to be ware of how they view stressful events
- skills to cope with stress
- role playing, group therapy, classroom instuction
Relaxation Training, Meditation, and Mindfulness
- relaxation training focuses on relaxing the physical body
- meditation focuses on quieting the mind
- mindfulness brings attention to the present moment
- does not remove the stressor, but helps deal with stress in the moment
Increasing Social Support
- providing for opportunities for social interaction with others
- encouraging workers to engage with each other outside of the bounds of work conversation
- facilitating employees to have less family-work conflict (e.g., policies/services to reduce demands of other roles)
