A Mixed-Methods Study of Creative Problem Solving and Psychosocial Safety Climate: Preparing Engineers for the Future of Work

Abstract

The future of work is forcing the world to adjust to a new paradigm of working. New skills will be required to create and adopt new technology and working methods. Additionally, cognitive skills, particularly creative problem-solving, will be highly sought after. The future of work paradigm has threatened many occupations but bolstered others such as engineering. Engineers must keep up to date with the technological and cognitive demands brought on by the future of work. Using an exploratory mixed-methods approach, our study sought to make sense of how engineers understand and use creative problem solving. We found significant associations between engineers’ implicit knowledge of creativity, exemplified creative problem solving, and the perceived value of creativity. We considered that the work environment is a potential facilitator of creative problem-solving. We used an innovative exceptional cases analysis and found that the highest functioning engineers in terms of knowledge, skills, and perceived value of creativity, also reported working in places that facilitate psychosocially safe environments to support creativity. We propose a new theoretical framework for a creative environment by integrating the Four Ps (Person, Process, Product, and Press) and psychosocial safety climate theory that management could apply to facilitate creative problem solving. Through the acquisition of knowledge to engage in creative problem solving as individuals or a team, a perception of value must be present to enforce the benefit of creativity to the engineering role. The future of work paradigm requires that organisations provide an environment, a psychosocially safe climate, for engineers to grow and hone their sought-after skills that artificial technologies cannot currently replace.

Influence of psychosocial safety climate on occupational health and safety: a scoping review

“…Workers were more likely to be workaholics [ 44 ], have high morale [ 83 ], and develop organisational citizenship behaviours [ 50 ] in a high PSC context. Moreover, adaptive and proactive work behaviours [ 88 ], creative problem solving [ 55 , 89 ], taking of personal initiatives [ 80 ], personal development [ 80 ], positive service behaviour [ 88 ], workaround [ 68 ], and service recovery performance [ 90 ] were more likely to be observed in high PSC work environment. Perhaps, managerial quality is one of the key benefits in a high organisational PSC context [ 64 , 91 ].…”

Psychosocial safety climate as a predictor of work engagement, creativity, innovation, and work performance: A case study of software engineers

“…Creativity and innovation researchers acknowledge that individuals within organizations do not operate in a vacuum highlighting the importance of understanding the contextual psychosocial influences. The extant literature shows that individual creativity and innovation at work are reduced by negative contextual variables such as workplace social interaction uncertainty or anxiousness and unmanageable job demands (Camacho and Paulus, 1995 ; Amabile et al, 1996 ; Goncalo et al, 2015 ; Probst et al, 2020 ) and increased when there are high levels of psychological safety - an employee feels safe to express their feelings at work (Liang et al, 2012 ; Tu et al, 2019 ; Oppert et al, 2022 ). These findings suggest that the psychological health of employees, influenced by their work environment, may be instrumental in digital workplace creative expression.…”

“…It is important to differentiate the distinctive contribution of PSC (Dollard and Bakker, 2010 ; Hall et al, 2010 ; Dollard, 2019 ) because it is a theoretically and empirically separate construct with PSC more strongly related to psychological health and employee stress prevention (Idris et al, 2012 ). Although PSC is a well-documented organizational climate for better workplace psychological health and organizational effectiveness (see Zadow and Dollard, 2016 ; Zadow et al, 2019 ; Loh et al, 2020 ), and some evidence suggests that high PSC is related to creativity (Oppert et al, 2022 ), no research has assessed the role of individual-perceived PSC perceptions on employees' future creativity and innovation.…”

The Effect of Benevolent Leadership on Job Engagement through Psychological Safety and Workplace Friendship Prevalence in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry

“…Psychological safety acts as a mediator through which benevolent leadership influences job engagement, playing a pivotal role in fostering a supportive work environment, particularly in high-pressure situations and customer interactions [19][20][21]. When employees perceive psychological safety, they are more inclined to take risks, share ideas, and engage in collaborative problem-solving, ultimately leading to higher levels of job engagement [22].…”