Perceived Job Insecurity and Sustainable Wellbeing: Do Coping Strategies Help?

Abstract

For workers, perceived job insecurity represents a threat and an obstacle towards achieving a decent and sustainable dimension of wellbeing at work and in life. Using the theoretical background of the psychology of sustainability and sustainable development, the aim of this study is to deepen the relation between subjective job insecurity, self-related health and life satisfaction considering the effect of personal resources, such as specific coping strategies that people may undertake facing job insecurity perceptions. The hypotheses were tested in a convenience sample of 769 employees in France. Data were collected with a self-report questionnaire and analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Science (IBM SPSS). Results showed that job insecurity was negatively related to self-reported health and life satisfaction; furthermore, problem-focused coping of the type of job, social support and training searching behaviors resulted in worsening this negative relationship. This study expanded the understanding of coping in the context of job insecurity and showed the limitations that proactive coping strategies have against job insecurity. These results encourage the debate on how far is it possible to attain sustainable wellbeing by relying on personal resources when job insecurity is experienced.

Some Voices from Italian Youth on Well-Being: How to Cope with Job Insecurity?

“…Job search is a specific kind of problem-focused coping strategy related to job insecurity, covering a wide spectrum of micro-strategies. Looking for a job by sending out CVs is, literally, an 'active' coping strategy but in some cases, this can generate malaise, in accordance to others quantitative studies (Giunchi et al 2019 In fact, in some cases, a wide range of emotions are associated with the process of searching for a job: Renata's current self-representation, for example, is characterised by a sort of ambivalence (optimistic but also worried), linked to her having enthusiasm but, at the same time, being afraid of not knowing what to do, considering that all her peers are in a very similar situation. The result is a rollercoaster of emotions: I mean I feel inside myself like I have two personalities: on the one hand, I tell myself: 'Oh my God there I'll do it!…”

“…In situations of job insecurity, for people with low-medium educational qualifications and an idea of work that mainly focuses on economic needs and its nature as a life-time regulation tool, their strategies focused on their prevailing problems were not very strategic (sending out CVs randomly) and generated high levels of malaise, because refusals and failures were frequent, which accumulated their sense of frustration and consolidated their feeling of hopelessness (Giunchi et al 2019). The interviews for this study introduce some different possibilities to be considered with greater attention in future quantitative studies: the level of education, the quality of problem-focused strategies and, as highlighted, the work functions prevalent for the person and the meaning attributed to it.…”

“…However, research on coping as a moderator in the relationship between job insecurity and well-being has produced contradictory results (Richter 2011), and this may also depend on the fact that the studies in question mainly considered general, rather than specific, coping strategies, and that the same coping strategy (e.g., emotion-focused) may have a positive effect on well-being in the short term, but a negative effect in the long term. A recent study (Giunchi et al 2019) suggests that some problem-focused coping strategies may further worsen the negative relationship between insecurity and well-being (understood as self-related health and life satisfaction).…”

“…'Insecure' jobs and alternating between periods of unemployment and periods of employment under fixed-term contracts are increasingly widespread among the youth in Europe (Baranowska and Gebel 2010). This phenomenon, especially within national and local labour markets that offer few opportunities for young people, is a relevant topic from a scientific point of view and, above all, from a psycho-social perspective in terms of well-being (Giunchi et al 2016(Giunchi et al , 2019De Witte 1999). Temporary employment and other forms of so-called 'flexible' contracts, with few guarantees for employees, are continuing to increase in the World (International Labour Organization 2016), in Europe, and especially in Italy where, in 2016, nearly half of 24-year-olds in employment had fixed-term contracts (46.9%), compared to ten years earlier, when about one-third of employed youth in the same age group were in that condition (Eurostat 2017).…”

What If Violent Behavior Was a Coping Strategy? Approaching a Model Based on Artificial Neural Networks

“…According to stress theory, the perception of certain environmental demands as stressful and the absence of other coping strategies can trigger a response to stress [1,7], e.g., high environmental demands [8,9] or unsafe conditions [10]. These stress levels, in turn, can feed back into the use of 2 of 16 dysfunctional behaviors that put educational quality at risk, rather than others that are more beneficial to the social climate and personal adjustment [11].…”