Tuesday, February 14, 2012
National Workplace: Effects of Negative Events
Sometimes, I wonder if what happens at work effects us even after we leave the workplace. I know that we can still be mad or scared about things, especially losing a good job or even a crappy job. But I also wondered about physical health...can events that happen at work have long term effects on our health?
So I conducted an online survey through ZOOMERANG.
Brief Method.
There were 563 people who participated in the survey (46% female; 54% male; 87% Caucasian). There were 30 items in the survey, but not all are salient to this discussion.
The survey was open for a two week period and 11 items assessed work environment,5 items assessed perception of workplace, 5 items assessed patterns of illness.
Negative work events: Discrediting personal character, Discrediting Professional Competence, Verbal abuse, Humiliation, Isolation
Patterns of Illness: PAIN Back pain, joint pain, shoulder pain, arthritis
Affect Agitiation, difficulty sleeping, depression, moodiness, worthlessness, panic
Job Stability: Have you resigned a position because of work environment?
Have you accepted a position because of work environment?
So what did I find out?
I found out that workers who had experienced negative work events had greater frequency in all patterns of illness.
People who experienced humiliation and isolation experienced the greatest frequency of illnesses.
I also found that when people percieve their work environment to be negative they showed more interest in getting a different job (well derrrh!!) However, these people also reported greater anxiety because they "knew the environement could be more positive."
People who see their position as negative are more willing to resign a position. However, people who report negative environments and DO NOT LEAVE THE POSITION had the highest percentages of illness categories.
When people were asked if they had accepted a position because of the environment most people said yes (74%). These respondents had higher frequency of negative events at a prior job (all negative event categories above 80%.
When asked if if they would resign a position because it was a negative environment the result was not so clear. 42% of respondents said they had left beause of a negative environment and 56% said they had not. These respondents experienced high levels of humiliation and isolation (86% and 80) but lower levels of discrediting and verbal abuse.
I can send the data to you if you would like.
What do you think? Can workenvironement lead to health problems or do health problems lead to workenvironment problems?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I believe that there is an economy of influence between both an individual's health (physical and emotional) problems and an individual's workplace problems, but I couldn't establish a specific degree of correlation between the two. I might even suggest that your question poses a false choice, but that's not quite it. The question seems to be posed from the perspective of the workplace. Why do I say this? Because the question demands an either/or answer regarding which is the causal agent: health problems or work environment. I think an individual, through her being-in-the-world, would recognize health problems and work environment are both/and causal agents: sometimes her health affects work, and sometimes her work affects health. For the individual, I think, the question is moot. Now, were I asked to identify which of the two--health issues or work environment--had a greater influence on the other, I would definitely choose the latter. Individuals--and by extention, their health problems--exert minimal influence on companies and insittution--except at the highest levels. However, one's workplace imposes much on the individual, not only in the areas of interpersonal interaction and general morale, but in more profound ways. Occupations are an important and inevitable definer of the self; additionally, the occupation's material goal is to vouchsafe the financial security of the individual (and her family). Thus, we might look at an occupation--and, again, by extention the work environment--as a "fate-bearing" (or "fate-barnig" if you want to go pomo) force, since in the occupation, both identity and present and future security are at risk. Risk, too, is ever-pressent, if even only subconsciously; the risk of losing one's job is the risk of one's identity (or at least, a varying degree of one's identity) and security. How, then, could the work environment not influence the individual's well-being to a greater degree than its reciprocal relationship.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the smaller the insittution or business, the greater the individual's influence and (potentially) the less the work environment inluences the individual. I could, in fact, envision a scenario in which an individual in a small company could impose himself on the environment to such a degree that he/she could make the environment an extention of him/herself. I need to stop right now.
I can only say that your findings reflect my own experiences accurately. I've had three jobs. I was unhappy in the first two jobs and was sick frequently--migraines, serious chest congestion, colds. I held each job for only a year. Currently, I am very happy in my job of eight years, and in those eight years, I've had fewer migraines, colds, etc. than in the two years I spent in the unhappy jobs.
ReplyDeleteAll three jobs were in the education field working with students every day.
I know it's only anecdotal, but I assume my illnesses increased due to my unhappiness.