Sara Göransson

Flexible Pay but Fixed Expenses: Personal Financial Strain among On-Call Employees

The aim of the study was to investigate the financial circumstances of a group of temporary employees and whether personal financial strain is related to an increased risk of ill-health. The study group consisted of 778 on-call employees. The response rate to a mailed questionnaire was 56 percent. Twenty percent of respondents stated that they had experienced economic difficulties of some kind. More than 50 percent regarded their form of employment as an impediment to obtaining a loan, and approximately 40 percent regarded it as a barrier to acquiring a housing contract. The study group is strongly polarized with regard to personal financial matters. There is a clear connection between poverty and health. Individuals who were both worried about their personal finances and objectively poor had far lower levels of psychological well-being (as measured by GHQ-12), more stomach, back, and neck complaints, more headaches, and greater tiredness and listlessness. Sleep disturbances acted as a mediating variable between financial pressure and stomach problems.

Work‐related health attributions: their impact on work attitudes

The purpose of this study is to introduce the concept of work-related health attributions and investigate the effects of such perceptions as well as of health status on work-related attitudes and t ...

Personality, Levels of Psychological Distress and Premature Termination of Psychodynamic Group Therapy: Results from a Prospective Longitudinal Study

This study investigated personality factors and type of psychological distress associated with an increased risk of premature termination of psychodynamic group therapy. Data was part of a larger ongoing longitudinal project. Subjects who had completed the group therapy (n = 53) were compared to subjects who had terminated the therapy prematurely (n = 41) with respect to their pre-therapy personality profiles (as measured with KAPP) and self-reported symptoms (as measured with the SCL–90). Overall, differences between the groups were modest but subjects that dropped out of therapy showed more difficulties with handling frustration, had a more distorted body image, felt more needed and reported higher levels of phobic anxiety.

Leader communication approaches and patient safety : an integrated model

INTRODUCTION Leader communication is known to influence a number of employee behaviors. When it comes to the relationship between leader communication and safety, the evidence is more scarce and ambiguous. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether and in what way leader communication relates to safety outcomes. The study examines two leader communication approaches: leader safety priority communication and feedback to subordinates. These approaches were assumed to affect safety outcomes via different employee behaviors. METHOD Questionnaire data, collected from 221 employees at two hospital wards, were analyzed using structural equation modeling. RESULTS The two examined communication approaches were both positively related to safety outcomes, although leader safety priority communication was mediated by employee compliance and feedback communication by organizational citizenship behaviors. CONCLUSION The findings suggest that leader communication plays a vital role in improving organizational and patient safety and that different communication approaches seem to positively affect different but equally essential employee safety behaviors. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The results highlights the necessity for leaders to engage in one-way communication of safety values as well as in more relational feedback communication with their subordinates in order to enhance patient safety.

Is work affecting my health? Appraisals of how work affects health as a mediator in the relationship between working conditions and work-related attitudes

This study investigates the role of appraisals by employees of how work is affecting their health, or could end up affecting it in the future. The study tests a model of health appraisals as a mediator of the effect of demands and control on employee attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions). This was investigated in a sample of employees in a Swedish white-collar organization, who participated in three waves of a longitudinal study conducted in 2007, 2008 and 2009; a final sample of 292 employees participated at all three waves. The results indicate that employee appraisals of how work affects their health have an important role in how working conditions relate to subsequent work-related attitudes. The study supports the importance of including employee appraisals when studying the effects of working conditions.