Organizational Behaviour

1
Organizational Behaviour Structure B8104

• Health, Safety, and
• Well-Being at work

2
Agenda

• Health, Safety Well-Being at Work
• Health Safety
• Stress
• Violence
• Well-being
• Film Death on the Job
• Break
• Articles

3
The costs of safety

• 1996 provincial estimate each workplace
  fatality costs the system 496,000
• Comparison of days lost from injuries vs strikes
  (in Canada, in millions)

4
Injuries Accidents

• Most Common Bodily Injuries
• Back (29)
• Wrist, hand and fingers (20) (RSI?)
• Foot, ankle and toes (9)
• Causes of Workplace Fatalities
• Exposure to harmful substances, Involving
  transportation vehicle, Struck by object, Fall ,
  Bodily exertion and heart attack, Caught on, in,
  or between object(s), Fire and explosion,
  Violence
• 1993
• 758 people died of work-related causes
• 526 people murdered in Canada
• The comparison becomes much worse if we compare
  rates, rather than absolute numbers!

5
Common Issues in Accidents

• Sleep disorders caused by irregular sleep
  schedules and insufficient sleep (includes
  nurses, truck drivers and airline pilots)
• Effects of monotony and boredom (Air Florida,
  glass cockpit phenomenon, supervisors to
  maintain concentration teenagers)
• Insufficient information (SA Healy, Ontario)
• Inadequate back up systems
• Importance of structured power naps

6
Critical Assumptions

• Maintaining health and safety on the job is a
  management function as much as a legal and
  ergonomic function
• In fact, now, in most jurisdictions, it is a
  legal requirement
• Yet in one study, managers failed a simple test
  concerning their daily duties
• Question What can management do?
• We now know what management factors predict
  occupational safety!

7
Management Lessons From Death on the Job,
Hinton Train Disaster, and Inquests

• Alarms not working
• Aleutian Enterprise, SA Healy, Arco
• Failure to provide adequate safety training
• Aleutian Enterprise, Phillips, contract workers,
  teenagers (fast food situation, Ontario case)
• Legal sanctions not seen as serious
• Phillips - 566 willful safety violations within
  the USA, 2100 construction deaths per year, 30-40
  prosecutions, 1 jail term OSHA and willful
  violations in North Carolina sexual harassment
• Implicit production push from management
• Aleutian Enterprise, Westray, Arco (fewer people
  doing more work) civil airlines

8
Findings from empirical research

• Work overload
• Lack of safety training
• Perceived safety climate
• Team communication is marginally important
• Lean production (when it creates intensified
  work pace, high demands AND low latitude)
• Job strain (high load, low latitude)
• Boredom
• On the job substance abuse
• Pay for performance systems

9
High quality work and injuriesData from
Barling, Kelloway and Iverson

• Focused on high quality work
• gt15,000 employees
• A high quality job is one which provides the
  employee with the means and the opportunity for
  doing great work
• High quality work comprised three different
  aspects
• extensive training
• job rotation
• autonomy
• Found a direct relationship with injuries

10
What is Stress?

• A Meaningless Term?
• I may not know what it is, but I sure know that
  Ive got it!

11
Work Stress Prevalence and Costs

• 33 of the population experience work role stress
  at any one point in time
• 15 experience daily work stress on any given
  day
• Costs of stress are undoubtedly tremendous
• work absenteeism, accidents, productivity
• social health, depression, self-esteem

12
Facts About Stress

• 1 in 3 Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44
  claims to be a workaholic
• Many employees say that weekdays are too short to
  accomplish what needs to get done
• The financial cost to companies because employees
  are trying to balance work family obligations
  is estimated to be 2.7 billion a year
• 25 of white-collar workers and 40 of
  blue-collar workers had a stress-related absence
  in 1998
• In the US the cost of stress has been calculated
  at 350 billion per year
• Stress levels in Canada nearly double the rate
  reported a decade ago

13
Facts About Stress

• One-fourth of employees view their jobs as the
  number one stressor in their lives. Northwestern
  National Life
• Three-fourths of employees believe employees have
  more on-the-job stress than a generation ago.
  Princeton Survey Research Associates
• Problems at work are more strongly associated
  with health complaints than are any other life
  stressor-more so than even financial problems or
  family problems. St. Paul Fire and Marine
  Insurance Co.

14
Stress at Work

• Stress is killing workers and is costing
  employers and governments billions of dollars.
  Employees need more time away from the office,
  meaningful time off from work and no cell phones,
  laptops, e-mail or any other tie to work.
  Langlois in Canadian HR Reporter, 18, June 2001,
  p. G1

15
What Is Stress?

• A psychological reaction to the demands inherent
  in a stressor that has the potential to make a
  person feel tense or anxious
• Stressors
• Environmental events or conditions that have the
  potential to induce stress
• Strain
• End result of stress
• Stressors at Work
• Unemployment, Sexual Harassment, Workplace
  Aggression, Job Insecurity, Role
  Conflict/Ambiguity, Monotony, Lack of Control,
  Organizational and Physical Environment,
  Interpersonal Stressors, Overload/underload,
  Change

16
Stress Prevention Job Performance

• St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company
  conducted studies on the effects of stress
  prevention programs in hospital settings
• Program activities included (1) employee and
  management education on job stress, (2) changes
  in hospital policies and procedures to reduce
  organizational sources of stress, and (3)
  establishment of employee assistance programs
• The frequency of medication errors declined by
  50 after prevention activities were implemented
  in a 700-bed hospital
• There was a 70 reduction in malpractice claims
  in 22 hospitals that implemented stress
  prevention activities
• There was no reduction in claims in a matched
  group of 22 hospitals that did not implement
  stress prevention activities

17
Stress
Physiological Symptoms Psychological
Symptoms Behavioural Symptoms Organizational
Symptoms
Competition and Change Technological
Advancement Increasing Diversity Empowerment and
Teams Work Load and Work Pace Job
Insecurity Work/Home Conflict Conflicting/Unclear
Demands Lack of Control
Perception Coping Job Experience Social
Support Locus of Control Hostility
18
Preventive Stress Management

• Primary Prevention
• Aim to reduce risk factor or change nature of
  stressor
• Perceived control, Role clarity and information,
  High quality leadership
• Secondary Prevention
• Aim to alter the ways in which individuals
  respond to the risks and stressors
• Social support from supervisors and peers
• Tertiary Prevention
• Aim to heal those who have been traumatized or
  distressed at work
• EAPS, exercise, relaxation training, fitness

19
Workplace Violence

• Workplace violence All individual behavior
  aimed at harming others in and around a place of
  work
• Key to this type of counterproductive work
  behavior is that it is interpersonal in nature,
  and there is an intent to harm on the part of the
  perpetrator.
• Workplace violence has been further divided into
  acts of a physical and psychological
  aggression, b direct and indirect acts.

20
Recent Examples

• In 1999 on New Year's Eve, a 26-year-old man held
  a Toronto doctor hostage at gunpoint. The man was
  upset because staff wouldn't give immediate care
  to his daughter.
• In 1999, former OC Transpo employee Pierre Lebrun
  arrived at the main bus garage with a hunting
  rifle and killed four public transit workers. He
  then shot himself. Lebrun reported feeling
  ostracized and harassed by his co-workers for
  years.
• In 1995, two Vancouver construction workers for
  were subjected to verbal and physical abuse and
  general harassment by council members who
  disagreed with the construction project. The
  tires of their vehicles were punctured, they were
  followed, threatened. Both men were pushed,
  grabbed and shoved and one man punched in the
  face and kicked in the groin.
• Post office worker I was just standing up for
  my rights. There comes a time when you have to
  take a stand. Teach those bastards a lesson.

21
Canadian Statistics

• Data suggests that while workers in Canada are
  less likely to be murdered on the job than
  workers in the US, workers in Canada are more
  likely to be the victim of a non-fatal assault
  (International Labor Organization, 1998).
• These statistics have suggested that 4-5 of
  workers have been assaulted over the last year at
  work (ILO, 1998).
• 80 of nurses in Nova Scotia have reported being
  the victim of violence at work over their careers
  (Nova Scotia Department of Labour, 2003).
• More than 80of British Columbian teachers say
  they've experienced overt violence while on the
  job.
• These are only the incidents that are reported
  and documented.

22
Workplace Violence

• 21 of all deaths in the USA, 2 in Canada
• Progresses from less to more serious
• Different types of violence
• Type 1 - Stranger
• Type 2 - Customer
• Type 3 - Employee
• Type 4 - Family member

23
Major predictors of type 3 violence

• Futility of profiling
• Utility of focusing on workplace factors
• Perceived injustice in the workplace
• Abusive supervision (or abusive colleagues eg OC
  Transpo)
• Shows that workplace aggression is target
  directed
• Over-controlling supervisors

24
On the rise?

• National statistics suggest that workplace
  violence is on the rise. These findings are
  based on numbers of grievances filed over time.
• 64 of Canadian workers perceive that their
  workplace is not as safe from violent persons as
  it once was.

25
Outcomes

• Diminished psychological well-being, cognitive
  functioning, and physical well-being
• Decrease in employee productivity as a result of
  diminished functioning of employees, and blaming
  the organization for the violence wanting to
  retaliate
• Withdrawal behavior (3.5 days of work for every
  incident of workplace aggression 55 million
  dollars in lost wages annually)
• Health care/counseling costs
• Compensation/Legal costs
• Negative publicity/reputation

26
What Can Organizations Do?

• Training (identifying cues, appropriate behavior)
  
• Policies that are used
• Formal disciplinary process ensures that all
  employees are treated fairly and with respect and
  dignity
• Identify problem areas, people, and jobs
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to provide
  counseling other medical help
• Straightforward performance and reward criteria
  to clarify expectations
• Encouraging reporting of aggression improved
  grievance channels

27
Toward Healthy Productive Work

• It is easier, and more effective, to focus on
  jobs than people
• Despite major social and economic changes, it is
  possible to move toward healthy and productive
  work
• Little changes make a big difference over the
  long term

28
Job Design Approach Expanding on Hackman,
Warr, Sauter
Work schedule
Work load and pace
Work roles
Job future
Healthy and productive work
Social environment
Job content
Extrinsic factors
Workplace monitoring
Employment volition
Psychological contract
Workplace justice
29
Words of Wisdom From W. Edwards Demming ...

• People must understand what their jobs are, how
  their work fits in, how could they contribute.
  Why am I doing this? Whom can I depend on? Who
  depends on me? Very few people have the
  privilege to understand these things. Management
  does not tell them. The boss does not tell them.
  He (she) does not know what his (her) job is.
  When people understand what their jobs are, then
  they can make joy in their work. Otherwise, I
  think they cannot.

30
Toward Healthy and Productive Work Some
Concluding Thoughts

• Becomes even more critical in turbulent times,
  both for employees and organizations
• Large organizational and job changes are
  unnecessary, and perhaps counterproductive given
  social and economic changes
• Given these changes, enhancing employee
  perceptions of control is critical
• Little changes do make a big difference in the
  long term

31
Toward Healthy and Productive Work Some
Concluding Thoughts

• Read more novels and fewer business books.
• Relationships are really all there is
• Tom Peters,
• quoted in Charles Handys
• The empty raincoat, p. 126)