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Clinical staff working in mental health services experience high levels of work-related stress, burnout and poor well-being. Increased levels of stress, burnout, depression and anxiety and poorer mental well-being among health-care workers are associated with more sick days, absenteeism, lower work satisfaction, increased staff turnover and reduced quality of patient care. Virtual reality (VR) relaxation is a technique whereby experiences of pleasant and calming environments are accessed through a head-mounted display to promote relaxation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of a study that assesses the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a multi-session VR relaxation intervention amongst mental health professionals, to improve their relaxation levels and mental well-being.

The study follows a pre–post-test design. Mental health staff will be recruited for five weeks of VR relaxation. The authors will measure the feasibility and acceptability of the VR relaxation intervention as primary outcomes, alongside secondary outcomes evaluating the benefits of VR relaxation for mental well-being.

The study aims to recruit 20–25 health-care professionals working in both inpatient and specialist community mental health settings.

Research indicates the potential of VR relaxation as a low-intensity intervention to promote relaxation and reduce stress in the workplace. If VR relaxation is shown to be feasible and acceptable, when delivered across multiple sessions, there would be scope for large-scale work to investigate its effectiveness as an approach to enable health-care professionals to de-stress, relax and optimise their mental well-being. In turn, this may consequently reduce turnover and improve stress-related sick leave across health-care services.

Construction organizations' investment in effective talent-development programs is a key strategy in attracting, developing and retaining staff. Such programs are especially important given the current challenges in the construction workforce, including labor shortages, an aging workforce, generational differences in the workforce, supply chain disruptions and the need to effectively train staff in the skills that are essential in a constrained labor environment. To address these challenges, this study proposes a performance measurement strategy that construction companies can use as input to design their talent development programs.

The strategy intends to assess the performance of project managers and develop criteria that define categories of their performance, including the top performers' category. This enables construction organizations to provide each project manager with individualized training that addresses areas of weakness and in turn, develops the skills that correspond with being top performers. The proposed strategy was developed and tested by surveying the immediate supervisors of 187 project managers working for general and specialty contractors in the United States. Principal component analysis was used to develop a single performance construct from seven performance criteria.

This construct was used to organize the project managers into the categories of top, above-average and below-average performers. According to the findings, top-performing project managers have well-rounded skills in the areas of leadership, communication, technical proficiency and overall job knowledge.

The outcomes of this study can help construction organizations focus their talent-development programs on the skills most associated with PMs being top performers.

This study provides construction organizations with a comprehensive performance-measuring construct to focus their talent-development programs on the skills most associated with top-performing project managers. Researchers can use this study as a foundation for further understanding how performance is related to various construction professions.

This research applies social identity theory (SIT) to examine how White diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professionals perceive their role and contributions to advancing workplace DEI.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to structure and guide the study, and data were collected from interviews with 16 White DEI professionals.

The SIT concept of social categorization was selected as a framework to discuss the findings, which were divided into two sections: in-group identity and out-group identity. The participants' in-group identities demonstrated how the participants leveraged the participants' Whiteness to grant the participants the influence and agency to perform DEI work. The participant's out-group identities revealed how the participants attempted to decenter the participants' Whiteness and unpack insecurities related to the participants' White identity and DEI contributions. Each of these findings has been associated with a specific role: leader, beneficiary, ally and pathfinder.

The practical implications of this study are critically examining White DEI employees' lived experience to develop an understanding of Whiteness while holding White people accountable for DEI efforts within workplaces.

Deeper and more honest conversations are needed to explore the phenomenon of how White DEI professionals enact and perceive the DEI contributions of the White DEI professionals. Therefore, this paper will provide further discussion on literature concerning White individuals engaged in organizational-level DEI work.

In this chapter, we consider music as a tool for emotional regulation in relation to disability, which can be employed to counter the dehumanisation of disabled people that arises from unregulated emotional responses to disability. Responding to Julia Kristeva's presentation of non-disabled encounters with disability as causing a physical or psychical death, Alison Duncan Kerr's arguments on the rationality of regulating emotions in encounters where unregulated emotions have negative effects on the self and others are brought together through Rebecca Jiggens' cultural model of understanding the significance of disability to illustrate the irrationality and moral paucity of ableism. We argue that music can play a role in regulating the emotions typically felt towards the disabled. Kristeva's idea that disability wounds or even kills the abled is insightful, but if we are right, then the tight connection between death and emotional reactions to disability could be overcome through the process of emotion regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore reactions to the introduction by the UK Government of the National Living Wage (NLW) in the UK hospitality sector and consider implications for the status of employee relations.

In-depth interviews were conducted with senior industry representatives of the hospitality sector in the UK.

Concerns surrounding an increase in the wage bill, in maintaining pay differentials and in shifting employment to youth were confirmed. Managers expressed ambiguity in face of the legislation, offering agreement at a personal level with the rationale underpinning the NLW, but also expressing concern about impacts on their businesses.

This exploratory study offers the basis for further research in understanding the foundation of employee relations in hospitality.

A reconsideration of the nature of the employment relationship is key at a time of growing concerns about the business-society relationship.

Uses reactions to the UK Government’s stipulation of a NLW to explore the basis of employee relations in the hospitality sector. This is timely where work to date in hospitality has largely focussed on symptoms but not causes of poor working conditions.

On the evening of 22 December 1988 the world lost one of its most dedicated environmental leaders. Chico Mendes, born Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, was shot down by ranchers as he walked out of the back door of his home in Xapuri, Brazil. Although Mendes achieved worldwide recognition for his efforts to protect the Amazonian rain forest and, in fact, has been proclaimed an “eco‐martyr,” his original and foremost concern was securing workers' rights for the indigenous people of the forest and preserving the land they lived on.

This paper aims to explore how experiences and emotions arising from the performance of ethnography shape the construction of knowledge about democratic practice in two social enterprises. It argues that ethnographers can develop a more nuanced understanding of organisational practices by moving beyond the self-reflexive work of being aware of one’s position to embrace the emotional work of engaging reflexively with this position, re-embedding reflexive moments in the process of knowledge construction.

Reflections are made on the emotions and experiences arising during a 12-month ethnographic study in two social enterprises.

The author found that engaging reflexively with relational and emotional processes of meaning-making opened up three analytical starting points. First it highlighted and helped the researcher to see beyond the limits of their assumptions, opening them to new understandings of democracy. Second, it gave rise to empathetic resonance through which the researcher was able to feel into the practice of democracy and re-frame it as a site of ongoing struggle. Finally, it brought to consciousness tacit ways of knowing and being central to both research and democratic praxis.

The paper adds to limited literature on processes of knowledge construction. Specifically, it contributes new insights into how emotional experiences and empathetic resonance arising at the meeting point of research performance and democratic praxis can offer analytical starting points for a more nuanced understanding of democratic organising in social enterprise.

Although incarceration may have life-long negative health effects, little is known about associations between child incarceration and subsequent adult health outcomes. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors analyzed data from 14,689 adult participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to compare adult health outcomes among those first incarcerated between 7 and 13 years of age (child incarceration); first incarcerated at>or=14 years of age; and never incarcerated.

Compared to the other two groups, those with a history of child incarceration were disproportionately black or Hispanic, male, and from lower socio-economic strata. Additionally, individuals incarcerated as children had worse adult health outcomes, including general health, functional limitations (climbing stairs), depressive symptoms, and suicidality, than those first incarcerated at older ages or never incarcerated.

Despite the limitations of the secondary database analysis, these findings suggest that incarcerated children are an especially medically vulnerable population.

Programs and policies that address these medically vulnerable children’s health needs through comprehensive health and social services in place of, during, and/or after incarceration are needed.

Meeting these unmet health and social service needs offers an important opportunity to achieve necessary health care and justice reform for children.

No prior studies have examined the longitudinal relationship between child incarceration and adult health outcomes.