PowerPoint

Presentation for
Management of
Occupational Health
and Safety

Prepared by
Bernadette Gatien

Copyright © 2021 by Nelson Education Ltd.

 Chapter 7

Psychosocial Hazards

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 Learning Objectives
• After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
– Describe and distinguish among the concepts of
stressor, stress, and strain
– Explain the transactional model of stress and its
implications
– Identify major sources of stress in the workplace
– Discuss the psychological, physical, behavioural, and
organizational consequences of stress

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 Learning Objectives (cont’d)
• After reading this chapter, you should be able
to:
– Discuss ways to recognize, assess, and manage
psychosocial hazards at work
– Describe and distinguish among primary,
secondary, and tertiary stress interventions
– Describe injustice, technology, and work–life
conflict as prevalent workplace stressors

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Poll

• Open the MindTap Mobile App and select your

course.

Approximately how much does occupational

stress cost the Canadian economy each year?
a) $12 to $33 million
b) $12 to $33 billion
c) $12 to $33 trillion
d) $12 to $33 quadrillion

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 Opening Vignette:
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• PTSD results from exposure to traumatic events
• Characterized by 3 symptoms:
– Re-experiencing the initial event
– Avoidance of specific situations
– Arousal
• Research suggests 9% of Canadians will
experience PTSD in their lifetime
• Many jurisdictions introduced presumptive WCB
coverage for first-responder PTSD

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 Introduction
• Workplace stress costs Canadian economy $12
to $33 billion annually.
• Absenteeism and presenteeism costs
stemming from work–life conflict are about
$6 billion annually.

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 Workplace Stress and Mental Health
• Psychologically healthy and safe workplace
– A workplace that promotes workers’ psychological
well-being and actively works to prevent harm to
workers’ psychological health including in
negligent, reckless, or intentional ways
• Mental Health Commission of Canada
– Published CSA-Z1003-13 as a voluntary workplace
standard

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 Workplace Stress and Mental Health
(cont’d)
• Psychosocial Model of Health
– Approach to the study of health that highlights the
importance of both the social environment and
psychological factors
• Social factors:
– Family circumstances, exposure to violence, and
workplace policies
• Psychological factors:
– Levels of self-esteem and anxiety, as well as the ability
to cope with pressure

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 Stressors
• Stressor
– Objectively verifiable event that occurs outside
the individual that has the potential to cause
stress

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 Stressors (cont’d)
• Categories:
1. Acute
2. Chronic
3. Daily
4. Catastrophic
• Vary according to frequency, duration,
intensity, and specificity of onset

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Stressors (cont’d-b)

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 Stressors (cont’d-c)
• Acute
– Specific time onset (i.e., you know exactly when it
began)
– Short duration and high intensity
– Low frequency
– Traffic accident is an acute stressor
– Example:
• Performance review meeting or a conflict with a
supervisor may be an acute stressor

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 Stressors (cont’d-d)
• Chronic
– No specific time onset
– Short or long duration
– Repeats frequently
– Low or high intensity
– Example:
• Job insecurity: Nagging
worry that job is
at risk

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 Stressors (cont’d-e)
• Daily
– Specific onset
– Short duration
– Low in intensity
– Infrequent
– Example:
• Dealing with a broken piece of office equipment

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 Stressors (cont’d-f)
• Catastrophic
– Specific onset
– Occur infrequently
– High intensity
– Long or short duration
– Distinction between acute and catastrophic
relates to intensity of the stressor

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 Stressors in the Workplace
• NIOSH model identifies major categories:
– Workload and work pace
– Role stressors
– Career concerns
– Work scheduling
– Interpersonal relations
– Job content and control

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 Stressors in the Workplace
(cont’d)
• 13 Organizational Factors
(CSA Z1003-13)
– Organizational culture – Involvement and influence
– Psychological and social – Workload management
support – Engagement
– Clear leadership and – Work–life balance
expectations – Psychological protection
– Civility and respect – Protection of physical
– Psychological demands safety
– Growth and development
– Recognition and reward

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 Stress
• Stress
– Individual’s internal response to, or evaluation of,
stressors; often characterized by negative feelings
of arousal
• General Adaptation Syndrome
– The body’s way of gearing up for fight or flight
(i.e., to confront or run away from a predator)

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 OH&S Notebook 7.1
Occupational Health Psychology
• OHP applies the field of psychology to
occupational stress, illness and injury.
– Aims to improve quality of work life, and to protect
and promote safety, health, and well-being
• Four-component strategy focuses on:
– Organizational change
– Information
– Psychological health services
– Surveillance

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 Stress Moderators
• Moderators (factors) affect people’s evaluations
of stressors and how they react to them (i.e.,
degree of stress experienced)

• Moderator
– Variable that changes the relationship between other
variables
– Some aggravate or increase the effects of stressors
– Others can protect individual from adverse effects of
stressors

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 Stress Moderators (cont’d)
• Risk Factor
– Variable that increases the negative effects of
stress

• Buffer
– Variable that protects people from the negative
effects of stress

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 Stress Moderators
• The Individual—Personality:
– Relatively stable set of characteristics, responses,
thoughts, and behaviours of a given individual
– Type A Behaviour
• Action–emotion complex that can be observed in any person
who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle
to achieve increasingly more in increasingly less time
– Negative Affectivity
• A dispositional dimension reflecting persistent individual
differences in negative emotion

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 Stress Moderators (cont’d-b)
• The Social Context—Social Support
– This can reduce a person’s vulnerability to
stressors

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 Strain

Organizational Psychological

Behavioural Physical

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 Psychological Strain
• Psychological strain reactions include a disturbance in
affect (e.g., mood) or a disturbance in cognition (e.g.,
concentration).
• Feeling irritable, anxious, overwhelmed, moody,
depressed, and angry are common affective strain
reactions
– “Feeling stressed out”
• Disturbances in mood range from short-lived periods of
feeling blue, down, or irritable to longer-term and
more serious diagnoses of psychological disorders such
as depression and anxiety.

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 Physical Strain
• Physical symptoms of strain (e.g., stomach
upsets, headaches)
– May seem trivial, but evidence suggests that stress is
implicated in more serious physical conditions
• Coronary heart disease (CHD)
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Strokes
• Ulcers
• Asthma
• Some forms of cancer

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 Behavioural Strain
• Behavioural strain reactions take a variety of
forms
– Individuals may develop nervous habits (e.g., nail
biting or nervous tics)
– Other reactions include avoidance of certain
situations, or a reduction in individual
involvement, either because of a lack of interest
or as a means of reducing time demands

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 Organizational Strain
• Common organizational outcomes of stress:
– Increased absenteeism
– Decreased performance
– Disturbances of interpersonal relationships at
work
– Increased likelihood of looking for alternative
employment

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 Recognizing, Assessing,
and Managing Psychosocial Hazards
• Work-related stressors, stress, and strain have
substantial negative consequences for both
employees and organizations
• Identifying psychosocial hazards:
– Learn to identify stressors
– Survey the employees
– Look for telltale signs of stress
– Be attuned to individual employees

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 Recognizing, Assessing, and
Managing Psychosocial Hazards

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 Recognizing, Assessing, and
Managing Psychosocial Hazards (cont’d)

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 Recognizing, Assessing,
and Managing Psychosocial Hazards (cont’d-b)
• Preventive Stress Management
– An approach to managing stress in the workplace
– Emphasizes that the health of an organization and
its employees are interdependent
– Encourages the reduction of stressors in the
workplace as well as the recognition and
management of occupational stress and strain

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 Recognizing, Assessing,
and Managing Psychosocial Hazards
• Primary Interventions
– Reduction or removal of actual stressors
• Secondary Interventions
– Minimizing negative consequences once a person is
feeling stress
• Tertiary Interventions
– Help those individuals who have not been able to
manage workplace stress effectively and are
experiencing symptoms of strain

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Recognizing, Assessing, and Managing
Psychosocial Hazards
• Individual
practices such as
mediation or yoga
are secondary
interventions that
allow individuals
to recover from
stress.

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Injustice at Work
• In organizational justice research, “fairness” is
not treated as a one-dimensional construct
• Three categories of fairness judgments:
– Fairness of outcomes, or distributive justice
– Fairness of processes, or procedural justice
– Fairness of interpersonal treatment, or
interactional justice
• All types of injustice are associated with
increased work stress and strain

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Technology
• Increasing role of technology affects the
psychological as well as the physical well-being of
workers
• Technology-related factors are psychosocial
stressors:
– Malfunctions
– Isolation
– Privacy
– Increased job demands
– Increased expectations for continuous learning

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Spotlight on a Stressor:
Technology (cont’d)

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 OH&S Today 7.3
Too Much Mail?
• 141 billion messages are sent daily via email around
the world
• About 17% of workday spent dealing with emails
• Examples of policies to combat the inundation of email
– Pfizer Canada: Freedom Six to Six ban emails between 6
p.m. and 6 a.m.
– Volkswagen: blocks servers from sending email to some
employees after work
• How do you think employers can manage email
overload?

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Work–Family Conflict
• Work–Family Conflict
– Inter-role conflict in which the role pressures
experienced in the work and family domains are
incompatible

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Work–Family Conflict (cont’d)
• Work-to-Family Conflict
– Work–family conflict in which work demands
interfere with the fulfillment of family
responsibilities

• Family-to-Work Conflict
– Work–family conflict in which family demands
interfere with the fulfillment of work
responsibilities

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Work–Family Conflict (cont’d-b)
• Causes of Work–Family Conflict
– Behavioural involvement
• The amount of time a person spends in a particular role
– Psychological involvement
• The degree to which a person identifies with a
particular role and sees the role as a central component
of his or her self-concept

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 Spotlight on a Stressor:
Work–Family Conflict (cont’d-c)

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 Video Link
• “Working with Stress,” National Institute for
Occupational Health and Safety (NIOHS)
– Describes workplace factors that can create or
exacerbate worker stress, and suggests practical
measures for reducing job-related stress through
changes in work organization (2 parts, 17min)

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 End-of-Chapter Activities
• Consider your most recent or current job. Can
you think of examples of stress, stressor, and
strain?
• Consider how stress affects individuals when
responding to Well-Mart cumulative case.

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