Karen Milner

Psychological assessment for redress in South African organisations: is it just?

This article assesses the research on psychological assessment in post-apartheid South Africa from an organisational justice perspective. A search of peer-reviewed, published research on psychological assessment in organisations in South Africa was conducted from 2000 to March 2014. A total of 69 articles were found, of which the majority focused on the procedural justice of the instruments. Future research needs to focus on aspects of assessment that are related to interactional and distributive justice, if assessment is likely to be perceived as a fair and equitable practice in the workplace.

The relationship between workplace environment and employee health behaviors in a South African workforce.

Objective: To determine the relationship between the availability of wellness facilities at worksites and self-reported employee health behaviors (physical activity [PA] and nutrition [NUT]). Methods: Employers (n = 71) and employees (n = 11472) participated in the South African Healthy Company Index survey. The survey included self-reported clinical measures and lifestyle behaviors. A facility score was calculated, ranging from 0 to 100. Hierarchical linear models were used to calculate the relationship between facility scores and whether employees met PA and NUT guidelines. Results: The mean total facility score was 58.5 ± 25.5. The number of facilities at each worksite accounted for 5.4% of the variance in PA among employees (r = 0.054; P = 0.036). Higher facility scores were associated with better NUT habits among employees. Conclusions: Employers providing wellness facilities are likely to have employees with better PA and NUT habits.

Green Ergonomics and Green Buildings

In this article, we explore the individual and organizational outcomes associated with a move from traditional buildings to three green buildings. Our findings revealed that high-level organizational measures were not notably affected by the move. Changes were, however, seen in physical well-being and perceived environmental comfort. The primary drivers were air quality and lighting. The need to consider human factors/ergonomics in green building design has been recognized by the Green Building Council of South Africa as an industry standard and as the starting point for the development of an interior design rating tool. Longer-term impacts of green buildings on organizationally relevant indicators still need to be established.

Friendship in Socially Isolating Work Environments

Our aim was to assess the relationship between workplace friendship and organisational commitment in the call centre environment. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to collect the data. Three call centres within a South African financial institution were sampled. Self-report questionnaires were distributed in order to obtain quantitative data, while qualitative data were obtained through in-depth interviews with call centre operators. The results of the quantitative analyses revealed a positive relationship between workplace friendship and organisational commitment in two of the three call centres. From the qualitative analysis, four themes were identified: the alienating nature of call centre work resulting in lack of commitment to the call centres; high commitment to the financial institution in which the call centres were based; structural and managerial constraints on friendship formation; and agency, on the part of call centre operators to resist the structural and managerial constraints on friendship. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

How do we measure up? A comparison of lifestyle-related health risk factors among sampled employees in South African and UK companies:

The need to address the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases through changing the lifestyle behaviours that contribute to them has become a global priority. Settings-based health promotion strategies such as workplace health promotion programmes are growing in an attempt to start meeting this need. In order for settings-based health promotion programmes to be successful, they need to be based on the specific risk profiles of the population for whom they are designed. Workplace health promotion programmes are becoming popular in South Africa, but there are currently few data available about the health risks and lifestyle behaviours of the South African employed population. In order to obtain such data and reward workplace health promotion initiatives, Discovery Health initiated healthy company campaigns in South Africa and the UK. These campaigns took the form of a competition to assess the healthiest companies in each country. Through these campaigns, an extensive data set was collected encompassing UK and South African employees’ lifestyle behaviours and health risks. In this article, we used these data to compare self-reported physical activity levels, self-reported fruit and vegetable consumption, calculated BMI, self-reported smoking, mental health indicators, and health screening status of the UK and South African employee samples. We found significant differences across all measures, with the exception of self-reported fruit and vegetable consumption. The findings emphasise the importance of using local data to tailor workplace health promotion programmes for the population for which the programmes have been designed.