The funeral and mortuary sector, including funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoria, is a largely neglected sector in regard to the study of occupational factors that can affect the quality of working life. The present study aimed at overcoming this gap by investigating job demands and resources that may affect burnout levels. Data were collected through a self-report questionnaire involving funeral industry employees (N = 229) from cemetery, morgues, crematoria and funeral agencies in a Northern Italian region. The survey was cross-sectional and non-randomized. Results reveal that among job demands, stigma consciousness, supervisor incivility and work-to-family negative spillover significantly affect levels of burnout, whereas meaningfulness of work and family-to-work positive spillover may represent relevant resources to counter the onset of burnout. The results of this study contribute to new insights into the psychosocial working conditions that affect occupational wellbeing among the funeral industry sector by also giving insight into how to promote resources to prevent burnout.

Italy was the second country to be affected by COVID-19 in early 2020, after China. The confrontation with the pandemic led to great changes in the world of work and, consequently, to the personal world of workers. In such a challenging situation, it is essential to be able to rely on resources that facilitate individual coping. The aim of this study was to understand the association between personal resources (optimism and humor) and exhaustion, and the role of self-compassion in this relationship. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses on a heterogeneous sample of 422 Italian workers during the first lockdown in April–May 2020. The results revealed that optimism and humor were positively associated with self-compassion; optimism and humor also had a negative association with exhaustion; and self-compassion had a mediating role between the two personal resources and exhaustion. These results confirmed the importance of personal resources in maintaining workers’ wellbeing during a challenging period such as the pandemic. The present study also contributes to the body of knowledge on self-compassion, a relatively new construct that has been little studied in the organizational field.

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The COVID-19 epidemic caught governments and health authorities off guard and found them unprepared to face its impact on the world population. Italy was the second country after China to face the outbreak of COVID-19 in the first few months of 2020 and the northern part of the country was hit first and most heavily. Following the JD-R theory, an online survey was administered to investigate which specific risk and protective factors predicted depression in a heterogeneous sample of workers. The analyses (analysis of variance, correlations, multiple linear regressions) were run in the total sample and in the sample split by possibility of remote working. The sample consists of 301 workers in northern Italy, 65.1% being women, and a mean age of 42 years. Depression levels were higher in women and in those who were not able to work remotely. In the total sample, emotional exhaustion at work, sleep–wake cycle problems, and longing for touch were significant predictors of depression. The sample split by the possibility of remote working also showed interesting differences. The results show the importance of monitoring the mental health of workers from professional contexts that are currently less widely studied than the healthcare sector, with particular interest in the possibility of remote working.

This chapter focuses on the importance of workers’ personal resources during difficult times, such as the pandemic period. In particular, the role of self-compassion in the work context is examined as an important resource for maintaining psycho-physical well-being. Further attention will be given to the impact of self-compassion on neuroscience research and possible organizational interventions to develop and/or support self-compassion in workers.

Confronting death and suffering represent central work-related contents in the funeral industry occupations. Despite past research evidence on the role of psychosocial risks, a positive side of the relationship with death exposure has also been highlighted. To expand research on these topics, the aim of the present study was to analyze the role of death exposure in affecting funeral and mortuary operators’ wellbeing. Analysis of variance was performed on 201 questionnaires to analyze differences between work exposure. Workers always/very often exposed to death through sight or manipulation of bodies showed better psychological and occupational wellbeing compared to those not at all/very rarely committed with these tasks. Those who interacted very frequently with the bereaved showed better psychological and occupational wellbeing, compared to those who were never/very rarely committed with these relational tasks. Insights on the role of death and suffering exposure and information for occupational health practitioners are discussed.

Discussion Individual factors interfering with NIHL were age, sex, infectious-disease and nonce-BMI based on analysis. The risk was arranged in order from high to low. Age was highly related to NIHL though hearing threshold had been revised by age and sex, risk was 3.638~14.876 times of reference group. Aging-hearing-loss and NIHL are too similar in audiogram, deafness classification and symptom to distinguish. So did infectious-disease, such as mumps, measles, epidemic-cerebrospinal-meningitis, rubella, chicken-pox and zoster, et al. Nonce-BMI was mildly related to NIHL, risk was 1.090 times. No evidence approved smoking drinking and length-of-service concerned with NIHL, which differed from other researches and should dig further. Good habits are important for occupational health as well as protective measure. It is necessary for employer to do exercising, keep from infectious diseases, maintain reasonable BMI, stop smoking and limit drinking 544

Death care work consists of dealing with traumatic events frequently, if not daily. This type of exposure is considered characteristic of the profession and can lead to significant negative consequences such as secondary traumatic stress. However, sometimes positive changes can occur as a result of experiencing trauma, which is referred to as vicarious posttraumatic growth. The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of vicarious posttraumatic growth (VPTG) in the relationship between secondary traumatic stress (STS) and work ability (WA) in a sample of 231 death care workers in northern Italy. Regression analysis with interaction was performed using PROCESS. The results showed a negative association between STS and WA and a positive association between VPTG and WA. The interaction between STS and VPTG was also statistically significant. The moderating role of VPTG was partially confirmed by the analysis: at low and moderate VPTG levels, the conditional effect was negative and statistically significant, while at high VPTG, STS exposure had no significant and negative effect on WA, as if VPTG had some kind of protective role against STS. These results provide new insights into the role of VPTG in work environments with daily trauma exposure, such as death care.