Research undertaken at the University of Gothenburg and published in science publications across the world, has established that employees who experience psychosocially poor working conditions have limited capacity to control their work and tend to feel undervalued.
According to the study, men who do not have heart problems but who experience poor psychosocial work conditions often have warning signs for coronary artery disease, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol values. The author draws the conclusion that these men change their careers more often and experience more health related episodes. The author also points out that there is a difference here between women and men.
Mia Soderberg of the University of Gothenburg concludes that “the labour market is no longer dominated by industry, but work instead deals more and more with knowledge processes and contact with other people. There has been a shift, in terms of how we view work-related illness from a focus on physical risk factors to a greater need to examine psychosocial factors.”
Psychosocial is a term being more regularly used. It is a combination between psychological and social. With respect to working conditions, psychological factors at work impact upon the psychological response of workers to their work and workplace conditions. Social factors refer to social interactions at work e.g. with colleagues or managers.
Psychosocial factors can be addressed within workplaces, in part, if businesses reconcile organisational objectives and individual goals. By cascading and aligning goals across multiple employees, businesses can create a corporate atmosphere of shared responsibility that will drive the success of a company. Employees who would have been affected by these psychophysical issues will see their significance diminish.
The business value of having employees engaged in an organisation’s work cannot be overestimated. It would now seem from this research that it will also have a positive effect on staff wellbeing.