A Measure and Model of Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace that Reflects Canada's National Standard

Abstract

To monitor workplace factors associated with well‐being and performance in the Department of National Defence, and embodying departmental efforts to create and maintain a healthy workplace, we assembled a comprehensive and psychometrically sound survey battery that reflects Canada's national standard for psychological health and safety. Moreover, for testing and understanding the relationships among the survey variables and national standard factors, we applied an evidence‐based framework to build a conceptual psychological health and safety model. In this article, we introduce our survey and model to other organizations and the wider academic community, we provide some preliminary support for the pattern of results illustrated in our climate profiles, and we discuss our future research agenda to address current limitations. © 2018 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of National Defence.

A multilevel perspective on the role of job demands, job resources, and need satisfaction for employees' outcomes

“…More precisely, our approach is "loosely" guided by the JD-R model, which highlights the relevance of job demands and of job resources linked to the workgroup, leader, and organization Nielsen et al, 2017), and seeks to guide the refinement of this theoretical perspective without being impeded by its current lack of precision (e.g., Antonakis, 2017;Martela, 2015). This flexible approach allows to us to capitalize on a large organizational data archive of military personnel (Ivey et al, 2018), which was not collected for the specific purposes of this investigation, and yet provides rich information likely to inform further JD-R developments (e.g., Toninandel et al, 2016Toninandel et al, , 2018. More precisely, we rely on the results from comprehensive organizational assessment efforts realized in the Canadian Armed Forces/Department of National Defence (CAF/DND).…”

“…This organizational assessment (the Unit Morale Profile version 2.0; UMP2) was devised by CAF/DND to operationalize the new national standards for health and safety in the workplace (Canadian Standards Association Group and Bureau de normalisation du Québec [CSA/BNQ], 2013). What makes the UMP2 so interesting is that it was created to operationalize these standards from the perspective of the JD-R model , while capturing job demands and job resources related to the workgroup, supervisor, and organization (Nielsen et al, 2017) that were deemed to be most important for CAF/DND personnel (Ivey et al, 2018). As such, relying on the UMP2 allows us to rely on practical relevance to compensate for a lack of theoretical guidance related to the choice of the optimal set of work characteristics to consider in our analyses.…”

“I’ve Got Your Six”: The Importance of Peer Support to Women Working in Non-Traditional Roles

“…When women are not able to contribute, this could be interpreted by peers and leadership as a lack of knowledge or skill. Applying the stressor-stress-strain model (Beehr, 1976), those who work in a psychologically unsafe workplace, which in this case is the stressor, experience elevated job stress, leading to strains such as increased turnover intentions, reduced job satisfaction, and lower productivity, among others (Dollard et al, 2019;Idris, 2012;Ivey & Michaud, 2018;Rossiter & Sochos, 2018). As strong interpersonal relationships are key to a psychologically healthy workplace, women who are feeling marginalized and are in the minority will likely face difficulties in establishing such relationships with men at work.…”

“…Existing research suggests that these moderating factors may mitigate the adverse effects of working in non-traditional roles (Huyghebaert et al, 2018;Ivey & Michaud, 2018; leadership could buffer the negative effects of job stressors and job stress on strain was also examined.…”

“…Although a considerable body of research has identified associations between psychological safety, workplace stress, and psychological health (e.g., Dollard et al, 2019;Idris, 2012;Ivey & Michaud, 2018;Rossiter & Sochos, 2018), these studies have not specifically examined the job strain of burnout among women in non-traditional roles. Dollard and colleagues (2019) discussed the importance of psychosocial safety climate at work and its connection to psychological distress, reduced workplace efficacy, and burnout in workplaces with high demands and low provision of resources, but only in the general sense.…”