The effects of performance appraisal in the Norwegian municipal health services: a case study

Introduction: Previous research in performance appraisal (PA) indicates that variation exists in learning and job motivation from performance appraisal between occupational groups. This research evaluates the potential effect of job motivation, learning and self-assessment through performance appraisals for health personnel. Case description: This article focuses on goal-setting, feedback, participation and training in performance appraisals in municipal health services in Norway; and job motivation, learning and self-assessment of performance are the dependent factors. Questionnaires were distributed to a representative sample of 600 health personnel from the Norwegian municipal health service, with a response rate of 62%. Factor analysis and regression analysis were run in SPSS 12. Discussion and evaluation: The study suggests that respondents learn from performance appraisal. Nurses experienced some higher job motivation from performance appraisal than auxiliary nurses. All subordinates perceived higher job motivation after performance appraisal than managers. Conclusion: Useful feedback, active participation and higher education are fundamental elements of discussion in performance appraisal, as well as the role of increasing employees’ job motivation. In this study, nurses’ job motivation seems to be more effected by PA, than for auxiliary nurses. Both nurses and auxiliary nurses indicate that there is a learning effect from PA. This study may be of interest to health researchers and managers in municipal health services.publishedVersio

Managers’ Beliefs about Measures to Retain Senior Workforce

This paper aims to describe and explain the beliefs of public sector managers regarding measures to promote active ageing within organizations and how these beliefs can relate to their own attitudes, age, gender, organizational roles, and structures. Data were collected by mailed questionnaires from 672 managers on operative and administrative levels in the Norwegian municipal and health sectors. It was found that managers believe in the usefulness of at least seven different measures, identified by factor analyses. Sum scores were calculated from the factors, and five of them showed sufficient reliability. Ranked according to their mean values, the factor-based sum scores were 1) reducing working hours, increasing the number of holidays, and offering flexible part-time schedules without a reduction in wages; 2) reducing workload and demands; 3) increasing wages, pensions, and bonuses; 4) increasing esteem, learning, and job enrichment for the senior workers; and 5) repositioning the workers to other, less demanding parts of the organization. In multiple regression analyses, these sum scores were found to be influenced mainly by the managers’ individual attributes, like age, gender, own retirement plans, beliefs, and attitudes. Organizational and structural factors seemed less important. The findings are discussed within three schools of thought: the ‘Human Relations Model,’ the ‘Market Model,’ and the ‘Age Management Model.’ A fourth ‘school,’ the ‘Laissez-faire Model,’ is indicated by the 26% of managers who claimed no responsibility for the age management issues.publishedVersio

20 years of Nordic hospitality research: A review and future research agenda

Communicating hospitality and tourism research has been at the core of the journal aim since the early start in 2001. The aim of the current paper is to provide an overview of the first 20 years of hospitality research in Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, to draw some lines to international hospitality research, and to propose a future research agenda. The review provides a brief account of the main themes addressed in Nordic hospitality research including (1) hospitality as a concept and practice, (2) business strategy, (3) hospitality operations, (4) service encounters as performative work, (5) human resource management, and (6) labour market perspectives. Potential research avenues are outlined.publishedVersio

Health-promoting leadership: a qualitative study from experienced nurses' perspective

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To increase knowledge about experienced nurses' understanding of a health-promoting work environment, health-promoting leadership, and its role in retention of staff in the nursing workplace. BACKGROUND: The quality of leadership is imperative in creating supportive and health-promoting work environments to ensure workforce productivity and ethically sustainable caring cultures. More knowledge on how leaders can promote health and sustainable careers among nurses is needed. At a time of current and projected nursing shortage, it is important to understand the reasons why nurses intend to remain in their jobs. DESIGN: Qualitative descriptive. METHOD: Twelve experienced Registered Nurses participated in an individual, digitally recorded, semi-structured interview. Data were transcribed verbatim and subjected to qualitative content analysis of manifest and latent content. RESULTS: A health-promoting work environment should provide autonomy, participation in decision-making, skills development, and social support. Health-promoting leaders should be attentive and take action. CONCLUSION: Health-promoting work environments enable nurses to flourish. Having ample autonomy is therefore important to nurses so that when they face new challenges they see them as a way of using and developing their competencies. Although most nurses claim their own leaders are not health promoting, they have a clear understanding of how a health-promoting leader should act. The health-promoting leader should not only be attentive and promote skills development, but also cater for nurses' meaningfulness. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Nurses in primary healthcare understand a health- promoting work environment to be a workplace where they can develop, not only clinical skills, but also flourish as human beings. Further, nurses find it health promoting to have a meaningful job, using their competence to make a difference for patients and their families. Nurse Managers have an important role in facilitating meaningfulness in nurses' jobs in order to retain nurses as a valuable asset for the organization. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Do spouses coordinate their work exits? A combined survey and register analysis From Norway

Research on spouses’ joint work exits is scarce, although household factors such as spouses’ work status, marital quality, and caregiving burdens are likely to affect seniors’ work engagement. We therefore examine whether the work exit probability of one spouse affects that of the other. Discretetime hazard regression analyses of survey data linked to later registry information including all gainfully employed married respondents aged 50–74 with a working spouse (N ¼ 1,764) were used to assess subsequent work exits. A spouse’s work exit is a strong predictor of a respondent’s work exit (hazard ratio 3.1, 95% confidence interval [2.5, 4.0]). Educational attainment, poor marital quality, and spouses’ health and care needs do not predict work exits. Surprisingly, no gender differences are observed. Research on larger survey samples to distinguish different work exit routes and reasons for spouses

Changes in health and health behavior associated with retirement

Objectives: While poor health contributes to early work exits, it is less clear how early work exits affect health. This study therefore examines changes in health associated with retirement. Method: Survey data from gainfully employed individuals aged 57 to 66 in 2002 were used to assess changes in health status and behaviors associated with retirement (49%) 5 years later (N = 546). Results: Compared with workers, retirees were more likely to report improvements in mental health (odds ratio [OR] = 1.67), and less likely to report mental health deteriorations (OR = 0.56). Retirees were more likely to both increase (OR = 2.03) and reduce (OR = 1.87) their alcohol intake, and to increase physical activity (OR = 2.01) and lose weight (OR = 1.75). Discussion: As welfare states aim to extend working life to counteract repercussions of population aging, findings on possible health benefits for retirees may warrant more focus on the pros and cons of a prolonged working life.publishedVersio

An Open Time Perspective and Social Support to Sustain in Healthcare Work: Results of a Two-Wave Complete Panel Study

Based on lifespan developmental psychology and psychosocial work characteristics theory, we examined longitudinal relations between calendar age, occupational time perspective, different types of job demands and job resources in relation to sustainable employability (i.e., work ability, vitality and employability) among healthcare workers in Netherlands (N = 1478). Results of our two-wave complete panel study revealed satisfactory fit indices for the metric invariance of the included variables across the two waves (6-month time lag). Our results revealed a negative relation between calendar age and external employability of healthcare workers (limited support for hypothesis 1), and more consistent evidence for positive relations between an open future time perspective and across-time changes in vitality, work ability and external employability (supporting hypothesis 2). Few significant findings were found for relations between specific job demands or job resources and indicators of sustainable employability of healthcare workers (mixed results hypotheses 3 and 4). Our explorative tests of possible moderating effects of age or occupational time perspective in predicting relations between psychosocial work characteristics and indicators of sustainable employability revealed only a significant interaction effect of supervisor support and future time perspective in explaining across-time changes in external employability of healthcare workers (rejecting hypothesis 5 and confirming hypothesis 6). We discuss the practical as well as theoretical implications of these findings, and present recommendations for future research.publishedVersio

Employable as we age? A systematic review of relationships between age conceptualizations and employability

This systematic review aimed to provide an overview of earlier research on the relationships between age conceptualizations (i.e., calendar age, organizational age, lifespan age, psychosocial age, and functional age) and indicators of employability. We have conducted a systematic literature search using PsycINFO, Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, CINAHL, ERIC, MEDLINE, and Science Direct. Two raters evaluated the articles and subsequently distinguished = 41 studies that met the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. Our review revealed that many researchers adopted different operationalizations to measure employability (15 studies were based on an input- or competence-based measure of employability, 23 studies included an output- or labor market-based measure of employability, and three studies included a combination of both measures). Moreover, most studies included calendar age (40 studies, 97.6%) as indicator of aging at work, and were based on a cross-sectional design (34 studies, 82.9%; 17.1% a longitudinal design). Based on the Standardized Index of Convergence (SIC) method, different types of evidence were found for the relationships between age and the employability measures. For relationships between psychosocial age and lifespan age, on the one hand, and employability measures, on the other hand, too few studies were found to draw conclusions. Yet, for relationships between calendar age and labor market-based measures strong consistent negative relationships were found across the studies, and moderately strong positive relationships were found for functional age and labor market- based measures. For organizational age and both competence-based as well as labor market-based measures moderately strong negative relationships were found. We discuss the implications of these results and propose a research agenda for future studies

Retirement Decision Processes, and Their Antecedents and Outcomes, 2014

This study addressed older workers' relationship to work with the intention to nuance the understanding of how working conditions, work organisation (including special means implemented in the organisation to prolong older workers' careers) and workplace leadership relates to work ability, health, motivation and early versus late retirement. As older workers represent a wide range of work abilities, this empirical field includes a variety of adaptations ranging from poor health and expulsion from work, to self-determined early retirement of employees with excellent work ability. Previous research on ageing and work in Norway has focused on factors influencing older workers' timing of retirement, as well as mapping of different professions' early retirement patterns and tools to prolong older workers working careers. However, there is a lack of research regarding the individual worker's decision process preceding the act of retirement; little is known about factors influencing the decisions and the potential changes in decisions, and whether these decision processes are different for men and women. Knowledge in this area would increase authorities` and employers' insight into possibilities for influencing older workers' retirement decisions, which might be important as even moderate prolongations of average retirement ages will contribute with more man-years than can be realistically achieved by attempting to reduce sick leaves. Hence the objective of this project was to identify the factors influencing older workers retirement decisions. A special focus was on the relationships between organisational, individual, and societal factors. The research used both quantitative panel data (NorLAG), and qualitative interviews. For further information about ”Retirement Decision Processes, and Their Antecedents and Outcomes, 2014”, please contact the principal investigator