The pandemic and its shock waves continue to disrupt the workplace, according to the 2022 Gallup World Poll. Stress among workers throughout the globe is at an all-time high since Gallup began surveying adults in 2005. Forty-four percent of workers reported that they experienced significant stress the previous day and more than one fifth experienced significant anger or sadness the previous day, according to data collected from more than 160 countries throughout 2021.
“People realized that their jobs and lives could change overnight, and it will take time and effort from organizations to rebuild trust and reduce uncertainty and fear going forward,” said Mindy Shoss, PhD, an industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologist at the University of Central Florida who studies the changing nature of work on employee well-being and behavior.
Attitudes about employee mental health have dramatically shifted. Historically, the onus was on employees to reduce their level of stress by taking advantage of company benefits such as mindfulness seminars and health coverage for therapy, but that trend is changing, according to psychologists who focus on workplace behavior. “The pandemic forced employers to recognize that they must pay more attention to the mental health of employees, and that the conditions in the work environment can either exacerbate or prevent mental health challenges,” said Leslie Hammer, PhD, a professor in the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health and Science University.
The fact that more organizations are acknowledging the important connection between workplace conditions and well-being is an encouraging shift for researchers who study this relationship. Workers have more leverage than ever to demand that employers evolve by creating an environment that values their well-being, said L. Casey Chosewood, MD, MPH, director of the Total Worker Health ® program, which is part of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Employees have more power due to the relative shortage of workers and the robust job market,” he said. “The organizations that are the most nimble and creative in managing changes will lead the way in attracting talent.” Psychologists are poised to help employers throughout the world transform how they lead their teams and support workers.
APA’s 2022 Work and Well-Being Survey confirmed that employee expectations related to mental health support are shifting, with 71% of workers reporting that they believe their employers are more concerned about employees’ mental health than in the past. More than 80% agreed that how employers support mental health will be an important consideration for them when they look for future work.
Chosewood is part of a team that developed a questionnaire to assess people’s quality of working life, circumstances outside of work, and physical and mental health status. While many well-being questionnaires ask about sleep, anxiety, and depression, the NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ) combines this with questions about the workplace climate, supervision experience, benefits policies, and other aspects related to the work context.
“We used psychological metrics that have been proven to be predictive of well-being,” said Chosewood. The survey, which was released in April 2021, includes questions about whether employees feel they can rely on supervisors for support, find their work meaningful, and want to go to work. NIOSH also offers resources to address issues identified by the survey, such as tool kits to help organizations minimize injuries, reduce sitting time at work, and build communication skills.
Hammer’s research has shown that well-being improves when supervisors value aspects of life outside of work, such as employees’ family and sleep needs. She has developed and studied 1-hour computer-based training interventions aimed at teaching supervisors how to ask open-ended questions, actively listen to employee responses, and pay attention to potential family or sleep-related problems. In the training, leaders also learn how to model the importance of life outside work by taking time off. In one of the interventions, the training led to increased job satisfaction, reduced turnover intentions, and improved personal well-being among employees (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 6, 2021).
Although these strategies may conflict with a manager’s instinct to project confidence and competence, researchers are discovering that leaders who are willing to be open and vulnerable can increase the level of psychological safety on their teams without jeopardizing their reputations as competent. Constantinos Coutifaris, MBA, PhD, an assistant professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin, was intrigued by an article about a tech executive who shared areas of improvement from her own performance review with the employees who directly reported to her. Coutifaris and Adam Grant, PhD, an organizational psychology professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, decided to study the effects of that type of sharing at a health care company and a financial company. In a field experiment, some managers sought feedback from team members about their own performance, while others shared their development areas from their most recent reviews with team members. The data revealed that a year later, the psychological safety in teams at both companies improved when leaders openly shared their own development areas, but this did not happen when leaders had simply sought feedback from team members (Organization Science, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2021).
Follow-up interviews showed that the leaders who shared their own development areas with employees helped team members feel safe to share their own challenges. “This enhanced the level of psychological safety because vulnerability was normalized into the team culture,” said Coutifaris. “Considerable research has found that when employees feel like they can take more risks without being penalized, they are more likely to voice their own opinions, generate more creative and innovative solutions, and engage more in quality improvement work.”
The continued high rate of resignations among workers is another sign that employees are less willing to continue in organizations that fail to value their well-being. “Over the past 12 months, the Great Resignation has continued,” said Anthony Klotz, PhD, who coined the term in 2021 when millions of workers were quitting their jobs because of the pandemic. “People are reflecting on their lives and asking why they are spending so much time in jobs that are stressful.”
Labor participation is now close to prepandemic levels because employees are not actually leaving the workforce—they are seeking better options, said Klotz, an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University College London School of Management. “They are moving to roles that offer remote work, increased wages, and benefits that cover college education, parental leave, and sabbaticals.”
Doug Reynolds, PhD, executive president of DDI, a leadership development and assessment company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is seeing the effects of the candidate-driven market in his company. Prior to the pandemic, he recruited in Pittsburgh for his product development team, which includes 80 software engineers, I/O psychologists, and analytics specialists. Now that remote work is an option, he is hiring people from throughout the United States, India, Europe, and other countries. “People do not want restrictions and rules, and they want to decide where and when to work,” he said.
But hires who are new to the workforce have shared with him that there are drawbacks to remote work that employers will need to address.
Companies are also reexamining how they select leaders, especially with an eye toward increasing diversity at higher levels, said I/O psychologist John Scott, PhD, chief operating officer of APTMetrics, a human resources consulting firm in Connecticut. One of the barriers diverse candidates can face as they apply for leadership positions is lack of previous experience in upper-level supervisory roles. “Historically, hiring practices for leadership roles have been based on the idea that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, but past behavior is a function of the opportunities people have been given,” Scott said. To increase equity in hiring, his company developed a simulation tool that assesses leadership skills. Applicants participate in an immersive online simulation, such as a scenario in which a company’s new CEO (the candidate) must guide C-suite leaders toward agreement on how the company should grow.
Psychologists say companies are also viewing essential workers differently postpandemic; the global crisis elevated the importance of employees who staff grocery stores, childcare centers, hospitals, and manufacturing facilities. “Companies that focused on promoting a good culture thrived, and those that didn’t lost employees,” said I/O psychologist Heidi Glickman, PhD, who specializes in providing executive coaching and consulting to organizations experiencing significant change. She worked with a grocery chain in the Northeast that was struggling to retain workers, and Glickman helped leaders improve employee engagement by increasing communication with staff. The company is now surveying workers more frequently and trained local managers to meet with their teams regularly to gather feedback. “If employees are feeling strained, leaders can respond by changing scheduling procedures and making sure workers are allocating energy to the things that matter most,” said Glickman.
Psychologists hope that the momentum to improve working conditions, pay, and benefits for people in service jobs will continue long after the pandemic. In a recent study, Shoss and colleagues investigated why jobs that were previously stigmatized by society, such as roles in food service and public transportation, were elevated to “hero” status during the pandemic (International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 93, 2021). One reason for the new status was the media’s message that “we are in this together,” which united typically stigmatized workers with society at large, according to the study.
“The public recognized the threats and challenges these workers face and the need to take action to protect them, such as making sure they have sick pay or other benefits that white-collar workers enjoy,” she said. With this heightened awareness, Shoss sees the world teetering between two possible futures. “There is an opportunity here to increase workplace safety or continue the trends of vulnerable work,” she said. “I hope this recognition will lead to more advocacy and public policy to address job quality and safety.”
Scientists reach a wider audience
