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This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of academic and professional Higher Education (HE) staff in the UK.

A mixed-method survey questionnaire was sent to almost 300 UK HE staff to secure qualitative and quantitative data to enable data triangulation.

The study found an adverse impact on academic and professional staff's mental health and wellbeing, further resulting in stress and anxiety. Several reasons for the increased stress and anxiety levels were identified, but social isolation and the increased workload were the most commonly reported. The most affected groups by the pandemic were females, younger staff, full-timers and those with disabilities or caring responsibilities.

This study offers a range of strategies to support staff's mental health and wellbeing; as such, it is of great interest to policymakers to inform their decisions of similar crisis events in the future. It also addresses some of the COVID-19 areas of research interest for the UK parliament.

The study's originality derives from exploring the pandemic's impact on UK HE staff's mental health and wellbeing by including professional staff's experiences alongside those of academics. It also expands the scant evidence concerning the pandemic's impact on HE staff in the UK.

Amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, higher education institutions (HEI) all over the world have transitioned to online teaching. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technostress and negative emotional dissonance on online teaching exhaustion and teaching staff productivity.

Survey methodology was used to collect data from faculty members in Jordanian universities. A total of 217 responses were analyzed to test the research model.

The research findings reveal that technostress creators have various impact on online teaching exhaustion and teaching staff productivity. Negative emotional dissonance has positive impact on both online teaching exhaustion and teaching staff productivity. Further, online teaching exhaustion is negatively associated with teaching staff productivity.

This research extends prior literature on technostress by examining the phenomenon in abnormal conditions (during a crisis). It further integrates technostress theory with emotional dissonance theory to better understand the impact of technostress creators on individual teaching staff productivity while catering for the interactional nature of teaching which is captured through emotional dissonance theory.

The research offers valuable insights for HEI and policymakers on how to support teaching staff and identifies strategies that should facilitate a smooth delivery of online education.

Unlike prior research that have examined technostress under normal operational conditions, this research examines the impact of technostress during a crisis. This study shows that technostress creators vary in their impact. Moreover, this study integrates technostress theory with emotional dissonance theory. While technostress theory captures the impact of technostress creators on individual teaching staff productivity, emotional dissonance theory captures the dynamic nature of the teaching process that involves interactions among teachers and students.

Night confinement (NC) has been proposed as an appropriate and safe way to make cost improvements in a high secure NHS hospital. Given potential controversy, evaluating the impact of this change is vital. This paper aims to focus on the issue.

The study used a mixed methods design to assess the impact of a three month night confinement pilot on four high secure admission wards. In total, 158 staff and 42 patients were approached to complete questionnaires and interview prior to and following the pilot. Questionnaires were analysed using T tests, ANOVA and Mann Whitney‐U to asses perceived changes in ward climate, working environment and quality of life. Thematic and saliency analysis was used to explore themes arising from semi structured interviews. Hospital data were collected to identify behavioural changes.

The study found that NC had no adverse effects and incidents of self harm, other incidents and seclusion hours dropped by a third during this period. This was contrary to staff expectations.

Limitations include: a large number of researchers involved; average response rate and a disproportionate number of patients on Tilt restrictions on the pilot wards. Further evaluation is necessary if NC is to be adopted more widely.

This evaluation suggests that NC can contribute to providing an efficient and effective secure mental health service.

This study provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact of NC on patients and is of value to other secure units seeking effective cost improvements.

A continuous issue which plagues all service businesses is the process of handling complaints. Whilst the topic has been relatively well explored, extant literature has failed to fully explore how staff demographics influence the methods in which they manage complaints.

A qualitative approach was adopted with semi-structured interviews. A purposeful sample was selected, inviting managers from hotels in Dubai to share their views on factors affecting the complaint management process, including the impact of staff demographics.

Staff demographics were found to have an impact on staff's approach to handle complaints. However, participants generally felt that, with sufficient experience, the impact of many of these influences would be negated.

Literature on complaint management has considered numerous mitigating factors affecting the complaint management process. The impact of staff demographics on how they receive and respond to complaints has not been thoroughly explored.

This study was designed to determine the impact of downsizing on the quality of work life for the nursing staff of community health‐care service organizations. Its objectives were to: identify the perceived impact of downsizing on the quality of their work life; determine the implications; and make recommendations on how to minimize or eliminate the negative impact and maximize the positive aspects. Analysis of the qualitative data indicated that there was a significant negative impact on the quality of the staff’s work life. Further analysis of comparative data revealed that the negative impact on work life was mitigated, as staff assumed responsibility for their professional development and career path. Although the adverse effect of downsizing was strongly supported in this study, there were also indications that its lasting impact was questionable. Evidence surfaced indicating that, after downsizing, additional benefits were derived, which enhance staff’s quality of life and the organizational climate.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how disclosure of employee issues by a large UK bank may or may not promote transparency and accountability (as assessed by the completeness of the account) toward the employee stakeholder group, and to shed light on the implications of the organisation‐society relationship for employee accountability.

The intrinsic stakeholder framework forms the basis of the qualitative, longitudinal analysis. It is adopted as the moral ground for the provision of a “complete” account of employee issues. In seeking to shed light on the organisation‐society relationship and its implications for reporting on employee issues the authors build a broader theoretical framework incorporating various social and political theories dealing with legitimacy, political economy, and language and rhetoric. Interpretive and critical approaches are employed. The analysis draws on an extensive review of published materials relating to employment in the UK retail banking industry and NatWest in particular, impacts of workplace changes occurring in the banking sector, and to the economic, social and political environment over the period of the study.

The findings indicate that what and how NatWest reported on employee issues was influenced by considerations other than transparency and employee accountability. The analysis highlights the complexity of the role of disclosures in the organisation‐society relationship and consequently the limitations of the use of a single theoretical framework to interpret disclosures.

The longitudinal analysis indicates how reporting practices are issue and context dependent and points to the limitations of theorising in corporate social reporting based on a single time frame and a limited analysis of the reported issues.

In highlighting a lack of accountability to employees, the findings have implications for the development of reporting standards on issues relevant to employees. Over time, it is hoped that development of an employee inclusive reporting framework, along with exposure of the contradictory role that reports may play in promoting accountability, will contribute toward improved employee management practices.

This study contributes to the corporate social reporting literature by extending the analysis beyond the firm focused stakeholder management perspective to considering disclosures from a moral perspective and the extent to which the complex organisation‐society relationship might work against the promotion of transparency and accountability toward stakeholders (specifically employees). In this way, through an in‐depth longitudinal analysis of disclosures from multiple perspectives, the paper contributes to theorising of the role of social disclosure in the organisation‐society relationship.

From 2012, all high-secure forensic mental health services in England began operating a policy of confining patients to their locked bedrooms overnight to increase service efficiency and reduce costs. The purpose of this paper is to assess the views of staff and patients concerning the policy and examine the specific impact of the policy on patients.

Measures of patients’ sleep hygiene, patients’ behaviour, ward atmosphere, engagement with therapy and adverse incidents were taken both before and after the night confinement (NC) policy was implemented. Both patients and staff also expressed their views of the impact of the NC policy.

Results provide converging evidence that the impact of the NC policy on patients is negligible. There were no consistent negative effects of confining patients overnight. Rather, patients and staff were broadly positive about the impact that the practice had on patients.

Confining patients to locked bedrooms overnight does not exert any consistent influence, positive or negative, on patients’ sleep hygiene, behaviour or engagement with therapy, and patients expressed a broadly positive view of the practice of NC. Thus, a NC policy may have a contribution to make to the provision an effective high-secure mental health service.

The study provides convincing evidence that secure inpatient mental health services that are considering the adoption of a NC policy may do so without fear of a negative impact on patients.

Inequalities can have a cumulative effect that leads to the presentation and subsequent progression of mental health difficulties. The detrimental effects can be compounded in the healthcare environment if staff lack an awareness of patients’' inequalities, and therefore, educating staff is of particular importance. The development of awareness training requires a deep understanding of staff perceptions of patient inequalities in a secure mental health care setting and the impact that this can have on mental illness.

The study was carried out using a qualitative design, where staff were asked to complete a 22-question survey from which the output is analysed using thematic analysis. In total, 100 patient-facing staff members working in a secure mental health facility completed the survey.

The results highlight that staff employed in a secure mental health care setting have an understanding of patient inequalities and how these can impact on patients in both the short and longer terms. The results highlighted the importance of awareness by staff and how an increase can have a significant benefit on the quality of the care provided within secure mental health facilities.

There is an increasing awareness of the impact of inequalities on mental health and how this can influence a patient’s journey. This study involving staff employed in a secure care mental health facility highlights the role of staff awareness of inequalities and also underlines the importance of understanding the key role of staff awareness in mental ill health.

This study aims to investigate how e-health system characteristics (information quality, system quality, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness) contribute to the enhancement of medical staff performance, patient care, and doctor–patient relationships at UNRWA-Gaza healthcare centers. It aims at testing an integrative single model comprising Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), D&M model and e-health system utilization.

This study followed the quantitative methodology and the deductive research approach. Data were collected from 241 medical staff who use the system employed in 19 different healthcare centers across the Gaza Strip. Partial least square/structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the collected data and to test study hypotheses.

Study concluded that information quality of the adopted Health Information System (HIS) has both direct and indirect positive impact on staff performance, only direct positive impact on patient care and only positive indirect impact on doctor–patient relationship. System quality, on the other hand, was found to have negative direct impact and positive indirect impact on staff performance and has both direct and indirect positive impact on both doctor-patient relationship and patient care.

Noteworthy that HIS has availability, speed and error detection and error prevention issues. It is recommended that these shortfalls be addressed together with improving user perception towards ease of use and usefulness of the system.

Management should also work to raise confidence in its medical staff to improve the effect of HIS on medical performance and patient care. It is also recommended that UNRWA should implement crowed management techniques such as queuing systems and on-phone booking to minimize patient waiting time.

The importance of the study stems from its context being conducted in a developing region (Gaza Strip-Palestine) which has a fragile economic, political and social environment with many other complexities. It is also conducted at United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) healthcare centers, which provide medical services to Palestinian refugees. In addition, this study is among the few studies that address the impact of individual e-health success factors on both doctor-patient relationship and patient care constructs. Most previous studies concentrated on the impact of health system adoption as a whole on these two subject variables and one can hardly ever stop at studies that address effect of individual success factors on them. It also integrated both D&M system success model and TAM model with some additional amendments creating and tested a new model.

The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in the recent literature on employment of temporary workers by exploring the impact of temporary workers on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviour of permanent staff with particular reference to their implications for patient safety and service quality in hospital accident and emergency departments. The analysis is set in the context of the job demands-resources theory.

The research was undertaken using a case study approach with semi-structured interviews in two London hospitals. Participants included staff from the HR director level, clinical managers and permanent staff who all had an influence in the hiring and management of temporary staff in some way. Transcripts were analysed thematically using an adopted framework approach.

The results indicate that the effect of temporary staff on permanent staff depended on the quality of the “resource”. There was a “hierarchy of preference” for temporary staff based on their familiarity with the context. Those unfamiliar with the department served as a distraction to permanent staff due to the need to “manage” them in various ways. While this was rarely perceived to affect patient safety, it could have an impact on service quality by causing delays and interruptions. In line with previous research, the use of temporary staff also affected perceptions of fairness and the commitment of some permanent staff.

A model developing an approach for improved practice when managing temporary staff was developed to minimise the risks to patient safety and service quality, and improve permanent staff morale.

The review highlights the difficulties that a limited amount of temporary staff integration can have on permanent staff and patient care, indicating that consideration must be placed on how temporary staff are inducted and clarifying expectations of roles for both temporary and permanent staff.

This paper studies the under-researched impact of temporary staff, and, distinctively, staff employed on a single shift, on the behaviour and attitudes of permanent staff. It highlights the need to consider carefully the qualitative nature of “resources” in the job demands-resources theory.