Australian work health and safety policy for the regulation of psychosocial risks: perspectives from key informants

The regulation of psychosocial hazards and risks, for the protection of psychological health, is a highly debated issue within work health and safety (WHS). Increasing work-related psychological illness and injury, alongside growing academic evidence and community awareness, has fuelled the need to better prevent and regulate psychosocial hazards and risks. Research must clarify challenges and improvements to policy and practice from stakeholder perspectives. We conduct a qualitative interview-based investigation with 25 informed participants on the effectiveness of Australian WHS policies for the psychosocial risk regulation. Participants are active in diverse roles including policy development, program implementation, industry advice, and psychosocial risk inspection. Inductive analysis revealed divergent viewpoints that are categorised into three broad themes: (1) scant specificity in the current regulatory WHS policy framework, (2) compliance complexities, and (3) the role of regulators in action. Tension points also emerged between these themes and sub-themes, including: (a) how psychosocial risks should be addressed in legislation, (b) how to establish compliance, and (c) the role of the regulator in evaluating compliance, and facilitating education and better practice. Future research must continue to disseminate knowledge from WHS informants to guide better practice. Researchers should investigate organisational barriers that hinder WHS psychosocial risk regulation

The Australian workplace barometer: report on psychosocial safety climate and worker health in Australia

The Australian Workplace Barometer project aims to provide science driven evidence of Australian work conditions and their relationships to workplace health and productivity, through a national monitoring and surveillance system. This report was commissioned by Safe Work Australia to provide a summary of the results from data obtained from six Australian states and territories: New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. The data provides evidence relating to psychosocial risk factors in the working Australian population as well as an analysis of relationships between risk factors and employee health and motivational outcomes

Work-life balance in Malaysia : An introduction

The paper discusses the concept of Work-Life Balance (WLB), why it is receiving more attention at work and in the society, the benefits it brings to organisations and employees as well as issues surrounding WLB. To illustrate an example, WLB policies in Malaysia, namely maternity leave and on-site child care centre in comparison with other countries are highlighted. Although WLB policies are implemented in Malaysia, they are inconsistent and not supportive of one another. For instance, generosity in maternity leave is not supported with on-site child care facilities in the workplaces

The Malaysian Workplace Bullying Index (MWBI): A new measure of workplace bullying in Eastern countries

Workplace bullying is a significant cause of stress at work. Existing studies, primarily based on Western-oriented frameworks and instruments, have largely overlooked the role of culture. This oversight questions whether understandings generated from those studies can be generalised to employees working in Eastern countries, which differ on important cultural dimensions. To date, there is no Eastern-based instrument for measuring workplace bullying. In two studies, we developed and validated such a measure: the Malaysian Workplace Bullying Index (MWBI). Study 1 entailed a content validation of bullying behaviours via written records (diaries) completed by Malaysian bullying victims. The 19 validated behaviours formed the basis of Study 2, with additions from the wider literature. Study 2 used survey data collected at three time-points from Malaysian employees exposed to bullying at work. The final result was an 18-item scale with two nine-item factors: work-related bullying and person-related bullying. Overall, the MWBI is a psychometrically sound measure of workplace bullying in Eastern workplaces

Analytical review of the Australian policy context for work-related psychological health and psychosocial risks

Psychosocial hazards and risks are widely acknowledged to be a serious challenge in WHS. WHS regulatory (hard law) and non-regulatory binding (soft law) policies should strive to engage organisations in psychosocial risk management practices and set a standard for good psychological health in the workplace. Therefore, policies should contain key definitions and aspects of good-practice psychosocial risk management principles. However, at present there has been limited review on policy in this area, despite growing evidence of poor work-related psychological health. Using qualitative methods, the current paper reviews relevant regulatory and non-regulatory policy documents and conducts a gap analysis according to criteria identified in models of good psychosocial risk management practice. The paper extends upon European research by Leka et al. (2015) and examines 39 policies (6 regulatory and 33 non-regulatory) in Australia. We found that most policy documents included psychological health in the objective of the policy. Moreover, non-regulatory policies showed sound coverage of exposure factors and preventive actions and, to a slightly lesser degree, risk assessment. Non-regulatory policy documents scored higher than regulatory policies. Within regulatory policies, there is poor inclusion of risk assessment, preventive action and poor coverage of exposure factors and psychological health outcomes. All policies could be strengthened by including greater coverage of work-related psychological health problems/disorders and associated outcomes. This is a novel review, which contributes to a broader program of research on Australian WHS policy. The next research phase seeks detailed information from WHS experts about the effectiveness and/or implementation of these policies in order to ascertain potential improvements

Negative workplace behaviour: temporal associations with cardiovascular outcomes and psychological health problems in Australian police

Negative workplace behaviour, such as workplace bullying, is emerging as an important work-related psychosocial hazard with the potential to contribute to employee ill health. We examined the risk of two major health issues (poor mental and cardiovascular health) associated with current and past exposure to negative behaviour in the workplace. Data from 251 police officers, who completed an anonymous mail survey at two time-points spaced 12 months apart, support the potential role of exposure to negative workplace behaviour in the development of physical disease and psychological illness. Specifically, we saw significant effects associated with past exposure to such behaviour on indicators of poor cardiovascular health, and a significant effect of current exposure on the indicator of mental health problems. Our findings reinforce the need to continue to study links between employee health and both negative workplace behaviour and more severe cases of bullying, particularly the mechanisms involved to strengthen theory in this area, and to protect against employee ill health (specifically cardiovascular outcomes and psychological problems) by preventing negative behaviour at work. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Work-family balance in Malaysia: Does work-family policy make a difference?

In Western literature, work-family policy is seen as an important agenda to address work-family balance issues. However, there is a lack of evidence on the relationship between work-family policy and work-family balance in Eastern cultures. The aim of this study was to advance the understanding of work-family policy and its relationship to work-family balance (i.e., conflict and enrichment) in Sarawak, East Malaysia. A sample of 506 employees from three public and three private sector organizations was surveyed twice in three months. By way of questionnaires, participants completed measures of work-family policy by Haar and Spell (2003), work-family conflict by Carlson et al., (2000) and work-family enrichment by Carlson et al., (2006)

Job Characteristics: What Can We Learn From the East?

Since being introduced in 2000, the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2000) has been studied extensively in various Western countries. Although the JD-R proposition is not proscriptive about specific demands and resource variables, scholars have used common variables as demands (e.g. workloads, deadlines), and as resources (e.g. support). The question is whether the common variables in the JD-R model that had their origins in Western formulations are applicable in developing countries. In this paper, based on grounded theory, we conducted focus group interviews to investigate specific variables that may apply in Malaysian workplaces. Two focus group interviews (N=13) were conducted with two groups of respondents (managers and non-managers) who worked for private and public sector organizations. Data were analysed using a thematic content analysis strategy. The study found that new variables (e.g. organizational politics, bureaucratic factors) emerged as new demands not generally explored in JD-R research, whereas similar demands were identified at a job-task level (e.g. deadlines). Regarding resources these were mainly identified as in other Western research (e.g. support). Job challenge and exploring new things were identified as pleasurable aspects of work. This finding suggests that using qualitative methods is crucial to exploring the psychosocial concept of stress at work to uncover cultural differences that are apparent between Malaysian and Western employees . Keywords: Job demands, job resources, qualitative studies, job stress, JD-R