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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different measures of working conditions affect the health at work of female and male workers of 15 European countries. Particular attention is paid to the gender dimension of this relationship.

Using the European Working Conditions Survey from 2005 the author describes differences in health at work by gender accounting for both psychosocial and physical hazards at work. A Probit OLS estimator is used to obtain the relevant estimates and endogeneity problems have been properly addressed.

Results show that controlling for a broad selection of personal and work attributes, working conditions are associated with more work related health problems – both physical and mental. Importantly, some evidence is found in support of a different pattern by gender. With respect to mental health at work, males suffer more from high work demands/low job autonomy compared to females. Task segregation may play a role in explaining these differences. A less clear pattern across gender is found with respect to physical health problems at work. When the endogeneity of working conditions is taken into account, results are confirmed and show that the effect of working conditions on health at work is under‐estimated when endogeneity is not accounted for.

The paper's findings contribute to shed more light on the controversial analysis between working conditions and health according to gender.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the well-being of UK prison officers by utilising a benchmarking approach.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Stress Indicator Tool is widely used in the UK to assess key psychosocial hazards in the workplace encompassing demands, control, support from managers and co-workers, relationship quality, role and change management. This study utilises this approach to examine the extent to which a sample of UK prison officers meets the HSE recommended minimum standards for the management of work-related well-being. Levels of mental health and job satisfaction in the sector are also assessed using measures with extensive occupational norms. The psychosocial hazards that make the strongest contribution to mental health and job satisfaction are also considered.

Respondents reported lower levels of well-being for all of the hazard categories than recommended. Moreover, mental health and job satisfaction were considerably poorer among prison officers than other occupational groups within the emergency and security services in the UK. Considerable variation was found in the psychosocial hazards that predicted mental health and job satisfaction.

The high levels of stressors and strains experienced by UK prison officers gives serious cause for concern. Priority areas for interventions to enhance well-being in the sector are considered and areas for future research discussed.

This study highlights the wide-ranging benefits of a benchmarking approach to investigate work-related stressors and strains at the sector level.

New ownership types in health care of welfare states raise concerns regarding psychosocial work conditions including different control dimensions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how job demands, control over work and control within work (CWW) were related to job satisfaction in publicly administered, private non-profit and private for-profit hospitals.

Questionnaire data came from employees at three hospitals; a publicly administered (n=774), a private non-profit (n=1,481) and a private for-profit (n=694) hospital. Mean-level analyses and hierarchical regressions with multiple group tests were conducted.

Demands including workload were significantly lower at the publicly administered hospital while the control dimension CWW was significantly higher. Background factors and their associations with job satisfaction differed slightly between ownership types. Attitudes to privatization were not associated with job satisfaction within any ownership type. Overall, psychosocial work characteristics, including job demands and control, were significantly associated with job satisfaction while their interactions showed no consistent associations with job satisfaction. As for the strength of the associations, no consistent differences emerged between ownership types.

Using self-reports only, the associations between psychosocial work characteristics and job satisfaction seemed comparable across ownership types.

Associations between psychosocial work characteristics and job satisfaction seem comparable across ownership types. This may relate to societal demands on the structuring of costs, work and production efficiency being similar for all.

Contributions include researching different occupations and their attitudes to privatization and two control dimensions considered important for different ownership types.

This study aims to explain the health impact of work demands and organization, job content, leadership and values in the workplace. It also explores the extent to which health conditions influence the meaning in life in late career.

The sample consisted of 1,330 Portuguese-based individuals aged 55–75 years. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for the data analysis and to test the research questions.

The results showed that stress and burnout are influenced by work demands and organization, job content, leadership and values in the workplace. Employment status had no influence. Health status affects the meaning in life.

Although participants were asked to answer the questionnaire bearing in mind their last work experience, retirees could have had difficulty reporting on their last work; therefore, in future research, the use of a qualitative methodology could also be equated as to complement richer information regarding past experiences in the work context.

Considering the main goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, this study contributes, namely, to the third one – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. In fact, directing a look at the condition in which older people work and at their health contributes not only to more productive organizations, to less spending of public money on health, but also to a more inclusive society. Bearing in mind workers are progressively retiring later and that the exposure to certain work conditions during the late career is problematic for organizations and for society in general, this study has practical and social implication.

Considering demographic changes and the aging of the active population in Portugal and the scarce studies carried out in the country concerning this relevant theme, the authors believe that the conclusions may constitute an important input for workplace policies regarding older workers. In addition, little research has focused on the effect of health in meaning in life.

The current happenings in the Ghana banking space and anecdotal evidence suggest that employees face psychosocial issues which impact their levels of work engagement. An intervention to manage these psychosocial hazards and promote work engagement among the employees is necessary. In effect, the study has proposed the promotion of a positive psychosocial safety climate (PSC) therein. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of PSC on the relationship between psychosocial hazards (i.e. work stress, workplace violence and workplace bullying) and work engagement.

The study gathered quantitative data from six commercial banks. Miller and Brewer’s (2003) sample determination formula was used to calculate the sample. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select the respondents. Questionnaires were used for the data collection, and Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyze the data from 543 usable responses.

Workplace bullying negatively predicted work engagement, whereas work stress and workplace violence had no significant effect on work engagement. PSC had a significant positive effect on work engagement. Furthermore, PSC only moderated the workplace bullying–work engagement relationship.

Based on the findings, PSC can be a national and organizational intervention promoted to create a positive psychological work environment devoid of such psychosocial hazards in the Ghanaian banking sector. Also, this will foster work engagement among the employees which will culminate into increased productivity.

This chapter departs from a specific Swedish perspective on structural changes which took place during the 1990s in Sweden. Before this period Sweden had a long period of improving democracy at work. From the start of the 1990s a number of structural changes were – according to national surveys – associated with increasing psychological demands at work. According to the same sources this was followed during the three last years of the 1990s by a reduced decision latitude. The prevalence of work-related psychological problems started to rise when decision latitude started to decrease. A discussion of concepts related to work democracy is followed by a review of the literature on work democracy and health. Finally, strategies for improving democracy and possible health promoting effects of such improvement are discussed.

Drawing on a unique combination of longitudinal administrative data and a postal survey, the purpose of this paper is to identify the socio-economic factors and individual characteristics that affect senior citizens’ decision to continue working on the Swedish labour market after the standard retirement age.

By using standard econometric techniques (multinomial logit model) on a large representative sample of 20,000 senior citizens residing in Sweden, the auhtors analyse the extent to which socio-economic factors and individual characteristics including personality traits affect the decision of senior citizens to delay retirement and to continue working after the standard retirement age.

The results of our estimations show clearly that good health, high educational attainment/high-skilled jobs, good psychosocial work environment, employment status (to be self-employed), personality traits (extraversion, openness to experience and conscientiousness) as well as industrial sectors (agriculture, healthcare and transport) are strong predictors of the continuation of work after the standard retirement age (65 years old).

High job quality and good working conditions, along with continuous improvements in public health, are seemingly essential elements for motivating senior workers to delay retirement as are preventive policy measures favouring the development of decent and sustainable working conditions across the life course.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is the first attempt in Sweden to analyse jointly a large range of factors influencing the decision to remain in the labour force after the standard/normal pension age, including psychosocial working conditions and personality traits.

Health is distributed unequally by occupation. Workers on a lower rung of the occupational ladder report worse health, have a higher probability of disability and die earlier than workers higher up the occupational hierarchy. Using a theoretical framework that unveils some of the potential mechanisms underlying these disparities, three core insights emerge: (i) there is selection into occupation on the basis of initial wealth, education and health, (ii) there will be behavioural responses to adverse working conditions, which can have compensating or reinforcing effects on health and (iii) workplace conditions increase health inequalities if workers with initially low socio-economic status choose harmful occupations and don’t offset detrimental health effects. We provide empirical illustrations of these insights using data for the Netherlands and assess the evidence available in the economics literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relations among job resources, value conflicts, information security climate and information security behaviour in the nuclear industry.

Longitudinal questionnaire data on information security climate and psychosocial working conditions were collected from two organisations in Sweden (response rate 62% and 59%, respectively).

A high occurrence of value conflicts decreased the participative information security behaviour, while psychosocial job resources and high job demands had positive effects on such behaviour. High rule-compliant information security behaviour led to fewer perceived value conflicts. When job resources were high, high job demands had a positive effect on rule compliance. Information security climate had a strong and positive cross-sectional relationship with information security behaviour but no longitudinal influence on behaviour. This suggests that the time interval, one year between measurements, may have been too long and events between measurements may have masked the causal process.

As one of very few longitudinal studies of information security, this study illuminated causal relationships regarding information security behaviour that have not been possible to identify in previous cross-sectional research. This enables better understanding of psychosocial phenomena and processes of importance for information security. This study does not provide conclusive results but indicates new important directions for research.

Social inequalities in mental health can be captured by occupational situation and social class stratification. This study analyzes the adequacy of a classification of work and employment conditions and an adaptation of the Goldthorpe social class scheme in relation to mental health in Barcelona, Spain.

Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (CA) on working and employment conditions were used to empirically construct distinctive working groups. Through 2 logistic regression models, we contrasted the association between mental health and (1) the cluster of employment and working conditions (with 4 categories: insiders, instrumental, precarious and peripheral workers), and (2) a standard Spanish version of the Goldthorpe social class scheme. The performance of the 2 models was assessed with Akaike and Bayesian information criteria. The analyses were carried out using the Barcelona Health Survey (2016) including the labor force population from 22 to 64 years of age.

Wide inequalities were found in mental health with both class schemes. The empirical class scheme was more effective than the Goldthorpe social class scheme in explaining mental health inequalities. In particular, precarious and peripheral workers in the MCA-CA analysis, together with unemployed workers, emerged as distinctive social groups apparently masked within the lower social class in the standard scheme. When using the standard scheme, the authors recommend widening the scope at the bottom of the social class categories while shrinking it at the top as well as considering unemployed persons as a separate category to better represent mental health inequalities.

The working poor appear to report at least as much poor mental health as unemployed persons. Policies aimed at more inclusive work should consider job quality improvements to improve the mental well-being of the labor force.

Our study examines the utility of social classes to explain mental health inequalities by comparing an empirically based social class to the Spanish adaptation of the Goldthorpe classification.