Safety climate, a measure of the degree to which safety is perceived by employees to be a priority in their company, is often implicated as a key factor in the promotion of injury-reducing behavior and safe work environments. Using social exchange theory as a theoretical basis, this study hypothesized that safety climate would be related to employees' job satisfaction, engagement, and turnover rate, highlighting the beneficial effects of safety climate beyond typical safety outcomes. Survey data were collected from 6207 truck drivers from two U.S. trucking companies. The objective turnover rate was collected one year after the survey data collection. Results showed that employees' safety climate perceptions were linked to employees' level of job satisfaction, engagement, and objective turnover rate, thus supporting the application of social exchange theory. Job satisfaction was also a significant mediator between safety climate and the two human resource outcomes (i.e., employee engagement and turnover rate). This study is among the first to assess the impact of safety climate beyond safety outcomes among lone workers (using truck drivers as an exemplar).
Workers who received a highly adjustable chair and office ergonomics training had reduced symptom growth over the workday. The lack of a training-only group effect supports implementing training in conjunction with highly adjustable office furniture and equipment to reduce symptom growth. The ability to reduce symptom growth has implications for understanding how to prevent musculoskeletal injuries in knowledge workers.
SYNOPSISA multidisciplinary team of researchers at the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW) developed an evidencebased approach to address three recognized challenges to workplace programs designed to improve employee health: establishing employee ownership, integrating with work organization, and sustainability. The two main innovations being introduced in combination were (1) integrating traditional workplace health protection (e.g., ergonomics, industrial hygiene) with health promotion (e.g., assisting workers in improving health behaviors) and (2) introducing a bottom-up participatory model for engaging employees in innovative iterative design efforts to enhance both components of this integrated program. In the program, which was modeled after participatory ergonomics programs, teams of workers engage in the iterative design of workplace interventions to address their prioritized health concerns with the support of a multilevel steering committee. The integrated approach being tested can complement existing worksite safety and health initiatives and promote organizational learning, with expected synergistic effects.
Two studies investigated possible factors that are associated with experiencing acute stress in police work. Occupational acute stressors in law enforcement were identified by police officers in Study 1 (N = 39). Using standardized mean (Z) scores as the dependent variable, MANOVA indicated that four of the 17 acute stressors identified in Study 1 were significantly different than the remaining stressors in terms of their combined intensity and frequency. The purpose of Study 2 was to examine the intensity of primary and secondary appraisal and reappraisal of police officers (N = 95) related to these previously identified stressful events, and the extent to which these measures differed as a function of experience in the police force. An adapted version of the Stress Appraisal Measure (SAM) measured police officers' primary appraisals, secondary appraisals, reappraisals, and overall stress perceptions that were associated with these four acute stressors. Multiple regression analyses indicated that two primary appraisal dimensions, threat and challenge, were significant predictors of overall stressfulness, with centrality found as an important appraisal dimension. MANOVA revealed that years of experience as a police officer influenced the extent of the officers' beliefs that they could cope with stressful events.
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