Work-related stress experienced by tour guides

Work-related stress (WRS) is stress caused or exacerbated by work. As ‘maestro’, tour guides (TGs) perform a variety of tasks within and outside the job description. Tour guides inevitably feel stress due to the demands from various parties. This study focuses on WRS of TGs and contributes to the literature by identifying stress factors from the perspective of TGs. According to the explanatory sequential design frame, a quantitative study was conducted with 90 participants, followed by a qualitative one with 16. From the five categories extracted through content analysis, to understand the relationship between WRS and work-related ill health (WRIH), WRIH-type and WRIH-reason were further analyzed. Findings show that WRS accounts for 15% of all the health problems of TGs. Unsafe conditions (UCs) are responsible for much of the stress experienced, while harassment, bullying and mobbing (HBM) from customers, shopkeepers, drivers and travel agents is the main stressor

Safety Professional Perceptions of Executive Leadership Interventions on Safety Culture

Nearly 20 employees are killed and 20,000 injured in the United States each day, with a contributing cause in nearly all being unsafe behavior. Unsafe behaviors are the result of a negative organizational safety culture, which includes the attitudes and beliefs toward safety transmitted from executives and front-line leaders to shop floor employees. While previous research indicated that front-line leaders have great impact on employee’s perception of safety culture, how executives impact the development of safety culture was less understood. The theory of planned behavior and social exchange theory were used in this descriptive phenomenological research study to address the research question associated with the lived experience of safety professionals observing the development of safety culture in their organization, as impacted by the interventions of executives. Participants were purposefully selected based on criteria for professional experience, time with their current organization, and their affiliation with professional safety organizations. Semistructured interviews were conducted, transcripts created, and hand-coding was employed to identify trends in responses. Emergent themes identified the most impactful methods employed by executives to drive the development of a positive safety culture; engagement, trust, ownership, and integration. The social change that this research can drive is an improvement in safety culture, leading to an increase in safe behaviors and a reduction in occupational deaths and injuries. The practical application of this study to the safety profession is to help guide executives on the most appropriate actions to take to improve safety culture and injury reduction in their organization through the demonstration of engagement, trust, ownership and integration

Analysis of Complexity of Unsafe Behavior in Construction Teams and a Multiagent Simulation

The processes in construction are more likely than others to breed unsafe behaviors, and the consequences of these actions can be serious. This paper first reviews the research status on unsafe behavior in construction teams. It then analyzes the complex mechanisms that lead to unsafe behavior and constructs a three-layer structural model based on agent-based modeling (ABM) technology. This modeling deals with complexity and elaborates on key points and potential research ideas in the study of unsafe behavior in construction teams. Using the ABM method, the effects of different incentive strategies on the safe behavior of construction teams under different management scenarios were studied. The results showed that when members have a fair perception of the situation, the effect of the excess performance reward distribution, according to the member’s safety awareness level, is better than the average distribution effect. This is the case whether the member’s safety behavior level is positively or negatively related to the member’s safety awareness level. This study proves the feasibility, validity, and universality of the three-layer structural model. It also reaches certain management conclusions and ideas for further development. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reference for research on the containment and prevention of unsafe behavior in construction teams