TY - JOUR
T1 - Long-term improvement of psychological well-being in the workplace
T2 - What and how
AU - Piao, Xiangdan
AU - Managi, Shunsuke
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank PEACEMIND Inc. for the provision of Employee occupational stress data. This research was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund ( JPMEERF20201001 ) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00648 . This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00648 .
Funding Information:
Thus, in this study, we aimed to examine the following aspects to build on the existing literature: 1) the worsening of Japanese employees' job stress in accordance with WHO emphasizing the criticality of psychological well-being; 2) the long-term impact of comprehensive workplace characteristics?job demands, job control, support from colleagues, boss, family and friends, work-reward balance/job security, job match, workplace interpersonal relationship, psychological demand, fairness/harassment, and work engagement?on employees' job stress to provide insightful evidence to create better working spaces; and, 3) the long-term effects of employees' coping strategies (i.e., actions in response to the job stress) on job stress, such as by taking steps to solve their problems, requiring or seeking help from other people, positive thinking, changing moods, negative thinking, and emotional divergence. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the long-term effect of workplace factors and employees' coping strategies on job stress. Our findings could be useful for reducing employees? job stress in the long term as well as the number of highly stressed employees, based on a comprehensive improvement of the workplace environment and coping strategies in the long term.The authors would like to thank PEACEMIND Inc. for the provision of Employee occupational stress data. This research was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20201001) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00648. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00648.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - Objective: The World Health Organization states that by 2030, mental illness will become the leading global disease burden. Thus, investigations of job stress might require more heterogeneous and innovative solutions. Existing literature demonstrates that good workplace environments have favorable effects on employees’ psychological well-being. However, studies on long-term effects are scarce. This study examined the long-term impact of comprehensive workplace characteristics and employee responses to stress (coping strategies) on job stress in Japan. Methods: Under a large-scale 3-year longitudinal study, 1,021,178 observations collected from employees in 390 companies from 2017 to 2019 were used. Employee job stress trends were confirmed based on company-fixed-effects linear regression. The relationship between one-year or two-year lagged comprehensive workplace characteristics or coping strategies, and employee job stress was estimated using linear regression. Favorable effects of the work environment and coping strategy improvement were illustrated based on the regression results simulation. Results: First, job stress appeared to be steadily worsening among the employees of Japanese companies from 2017 to 2019. Second, low job and psychological demand, high job control, a high level of support from the people around, balanced effort–reward, strong job security, and strong interpersonal relationship have favorable long-term effects on employee job stress. Third, employees’ coping strategies, such as positive thinking, changing mood, requiring help from other people, reduced negative thinking, and avoiding inappropriate emotional divergence have long-term effects on mitigating job stress. Particularly, thinking positively, changing mood, and avoiding directing feelings of anger and frustration toward others reduce high stress in 46% of respondent employees. Conclusions: A comprehensive well-organized workplace environment and appropriate responses to stress have a long-term favorable effect on employee job stress. These results provide policy measures for improving the workplace environment and for employees to adopt coping strategies to enhance their psychological well-being in the long term.
AB - Objective: The World Health Organization states that by 2030, mental illness will become the leading global disease burden. Thus, investigations of job stress might require more heterogeneous and innovative solutions. Existing literature demonstrates that good workplace environments have favorable effects on employees’ psychological well-being. However, studies on long-term effects are scarce. This study examined the long-term impact of comprehensive workplace characteristics and employee responses to stress (coping strategies) on job stress in Japan. Methods: Under a large-scale 3-year longitudinal study, 1,021,178 observations collected from employees in 390 companies from 2017 to 2019 were used. Employee job stress trends were confirmed based on company-fixed-effects linear regression. The relationship between one-year or two-year lagged comprehensive workplace characteristics or coping strategies, and employee job stress was estimated using linear regression. Favorable effects of the work environment and coping strategy improvement were illustrated based on the regression results simulation. Results: First, job stress appeared to be steadily worsening among the employees of Japanese companies from 2017 to 2019. Second, low job and psychological demand, high job control, a high level of support from the people around, balanced effort–reward, strong job security, and strong interpersonal relationship have favorable long-term effects on employee job stress. Third, employees’ coping strategies, such as positive thinking, changing mood, requiring help from other people, reduced negative thinking, and avoiding inappropriate emotional divergence have long-term effects on mitigating job stress. Particularly, thinking positively, changing mood, and avoiding directing feelings of anger and frustration toward others reduce high stress in 46% of respondent employees. Conclusions: A comprehensive well-organized workplace environment and appropriate responses to stress have a long-term favorable effect on employee job stress. These results provide policy measures for improving the workplace environment and for employees to adopt coping strategies to enhance their psychological well-being in the long term.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114851
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114851
M3 - Article
C2 - 35272248
AN - SCOPUS:85126796515
SN - 0277-9536
VL - 298
JO - Ethics in Science and Medicine
JF - Ethics in Science and Medicine
M1 - 114851
ER -
