Workplace Mistreatment and Threats – Work, Stress, and Health

Continuous multimodal assessment of physiological stress responses among nurses in relation to incidents of workplace violence: A feasibility study guided by Total Worker Health principles

November 12, 2021November 12, 2021

A primary objective of the present study is to demonstrate the feasibility of a protocol for detailed and continuous assessment of physiological signals among nurses using a wearable physiological sensor system along with event-contingent experience sampling of critical incidents. Twelve registered nurses (N=12) in a university hospital emergency department wore noninvasive wearable sensors continuously for seven consecutive days and logged the occurrence of workplace violence incidents. The ability to objectively quantify stress responses over the course of the workday could serve as a valuable tool in planning Total Worker Health? interventions.

Paradoxical Outcomes of Workplace Mistreatment: A Review

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

The workplace mistreatment literature commonly finds evidence of an array of negative individual and organizational outcomes due to mistreatment incidents (Schilpzand et al., 2016). However, the literature fails to prominently address the occasions in which certain forms of workplace mistreatment may be paradoxically beneficial to the target employee or organization. This poster presents a qualitative review of the workplace mistreatment literature, focused on summarizing findings from empirical studies that either indicate the processes through which workplace mistreatment leads to paradoxically positive outcomes or the circumstances under which they occur. This review highlights this gap in the literature by directly examining which individual, organizational, and other environmental factors qualify the relationships between workplace mistreatment and desirable outcomes.

The 2021 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

This is the fifth national scientific survey of the prevalence and nature of abusive conduct in the American workplace commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute and run by pollster Zogby Analytics. The prevalence rate of direct experience rose by half to 30% of adult Americans compared to the last sampling in 2017. The 2021 survey followed a year in which the number of remote workers exploded due to COVID; the bullying rate for that population was 43.2%. While #MeToo raises alarm over workplace sexual harassment, employment law and public attention ignore workplace bullying which, according to this survey, affects 79.3 million U.S. workers through direct and vicarious experiences.

Association of perceived discrimination at work and depressive symptoms among correctional employees: Assessing the moderating role of sex, race/ethnicity, and job tenure

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

This study uses past participatory data in order to investigate how the mental health, and specifically depressive symptoms, of corrections workers is impacted by perceived workplace discrimination (PWD) from peers, superiors, and inmates. Due to the changing sociodemographic makeup of the corrections workforce and its paramilitary structure, this project will then discuss how belonging to a minority group within the field of corrections (ie. women and people of color) or being less tenured on the job moderates the relationship between PWD and depressive symptoms. This study found a significant positive association between PWD and depressive symptoms and that for those who had less job tenure, there was a stronger relationship between PWD and depressive symptoms. As diversity continues to increase in corrections, these findings can be used to develop interventions to reduce mental health disparities experienced by this population and illustrates a need for more programs that target less tenured employees.

Effects of customer incivility on burnout: A moderated mediation model

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Using data from a public Institution, we analysed the effect of customer incivility on burnout and how trust and organisational justice mediate and moderate this relationship. At lower levels, justice moderated the association between incivility and trust; and of incivility on burnout (three of four dimensions) via trust. By not being perceived as fair, organisations risk having employees that- exposed to customer incivility- experience greater consequences on their well-being.

Can’t we all just get along? A nomological network of workplace mistreatment

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Our current examination of workplace mistreatment literature is conducted on a secondary level to identify trends and concerns across multiple research streams and unique to specific forms of mistreatment. The current work addresses these commonalities and unique concerns by identifying a holistic framework of workplace aggression, including immediate factors surrounding mistreatment, lenses through which the phenomena can be examined, and secondary-level categories for mistreatment influences (e.g., antecedents, outcomes). This framework was constructed through a thorough review and coding of 31 meta-analyses, qualitative reviews, and book chapters. The identified second-level categories of influences and outcomes of mistreatment may be practically useful for organizations when examining relationships and desired outcomes for workers, while the identified patterns of commonality in mistreatment research (e.g., prevalence of target perspective) highlight opportunities for future research (e.g., perpetrator perspective).

Long-term effects of workplace harassment on mental health and alcohol use

November 13, 2021November 12, 2021

Individuals were surveyed about their exposure to workplace sexual and generalized harassment, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and alcohol use/misuse at 8 timepoints between 1996-2007 (W1-W8) and were resurveyed in 2020 (W9). Bivariate analyses indicate that those who were exposed to chronic sexual or generalized harassment at W1-W8 reported significantly greater symptoms of depression and anxiety and past 30 day measures of heavy alcohol use. These results suggest that workplace harassment can have long-term health implications for targets, and that enforcement of existing laws that prohibit sexual harassment and enactment of similar laws to protect workers against workplace bullying could help to protect long-term health of workers.