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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 turnover intentions.

Building on attribution theory, the study tests the assumption that negative work‐related health attributions impair employee work‐related attitudes and intentions, and moderate the relation between health status and work‐related attitudes. Cross‐sectional questionnaire data from 785 Swedish retail white‐collar workers are collected to test these assumptions by utilizing moderated regression analyses.

The results show that negative work‐related health attributions are related to lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment as well as higher levels of turnover intention, even after controlling for demographics, work climate variables, and mental distress. Further, the significant interaction between attributions and mental distress indicates that it makes a difference for employees' turnover intentions if an individual with high mental distress attributes it to work or not.

Work‐related health attributions should be taken into account in order to avoid impaired levels of employee work motivation. The measure introduced renders it possible to identify and help those individuals who believe that work affects their health negatively.

The results underscore the relevance of how individuals think their health is affected by their work, and contributes to the understanding of how health status relates to work‐related attitudes. Since the measure of work‐related health attributions is easily administered it is also valuable for practitioners working with employee health and attitudes.

Over recent years there have been massive changes in working life and workplaces. Across the 1990s there has been a marked increase in reports of work‐related psychological distress in the UK. This paper uses the results of the most recent Occupational Health Decennial supplement (Office for National Statistics (ONS) & Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 2007), based on nationally representative data sources on distress at work, working conditions, sickness absence and psychiatric morbidity to examine the reasons for the apparent increase in work‐related psychological distress.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how work-related suicides are monitored, investigated and regulated in the UK, examining a small selection of cases and drawing on international comparison with other countries. Effective data collection and regulation are the cornerstone of suicide prevention, and this paper aims to consider whether the UK’s current regulatory framework provides an effective basis for preventing work-related suicides.

This study draws on qualitative sociological methods and is based on an in-depth analysis of 12 suicide cases occurring between 2015 and 2020. In each case, work-related causal factors had been previously identified by at least one official source (police enquiry, coroner or employer’s investigation). This study analysed multiple sources of documentation and undertook interviews with individuals close to each suicide case. The aim of this study was to consider the organisational response of three stakeholder organisations to the suicides: the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the coroner and the employer.

The study points to serious shortcomings in the UK’s regulatory response to work-related suicides. Suicides are currently not recorded, investigated or regulated. Whereas the fracture of an arm or leg in the workplace needs to be reported to the HSE for further investigation, a suicide occurring in the workplace or that is work-related does not need to be reported to any public agency. Employers are not required to investigate an employee suicide or make any changes to workplace policies and practices in the aftermath of a suicide. The work-related factors that may have caused one suicide may, therefore, continue to pose health and safety risks to other employees.

Whereas some recent studies have examined work-related suicides within specific occupations in the UK, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyse the UK’s regulatory framework for work-related suicides. The study on which the paper is based produced a set of recommendations that were targeted at key stakeholder organisations.

Past research on self-employment and health yielded conflicting findings. Integrating predictions from the Stressor-Strain Outcome model, research on challenge stressors and allostatic load, we predict that physical and mental health are affected by self-employment in distinct ways which play out over different time horizons. We also test whether the health impacts of self-employment are due to enhanced stress (work-related strain) and differ for man and women.

We apply non-parametric propensity score matching in combination with a difference-in-difference approach and longitudinal cohort data to examine self-selection and the causal relationship between self-employment and health. We focus on those that transit into self-employment from paid employment (opportunity self-employment) and analyze strain and health over four years relative to individuals in paid employment.

Those with poorer mental health are more likely to self-select into self-employment. After entering self-employment, individuals experience a short-term uplift in mental health due to lower work-related strain, especially for self-employed men. In the longer-term (four years) the mental health of the self-employed drops back to pre-self-employment levels. We find no effect of self-employment on physical health.

Our research helps to understand the nonpecuniary benefits of self-employment and suggests that we should not advocate self-employment as a “healthy” career.

This article advances research on self-employment and health. Grounded in stress theories it offers new insights relating to self-selection, the temporality of effects, the mediating role of work-related strain, and gender that collectively help to explain why past research yielded conflicting findings.

This article relates one aspect of an action research project on work related stress and mental health problems to its wider context. It is argued that self‐help/mutual aid, including self‐management, could make an important contribution to tackling the current epidemic of work‐related stress in the UK and elsewhere. Initiatives such as the government's Work‐Life Balance campaign indicate that the policy context is appropriate. An overview of the causes, costs of, and policy responses to work‐related stress is followed by a discussion on the nature of self‐help/mutual aid and the benefits that the sharing of experiential knowledge can bring to participants. This includes a specific, structured form of self‐help: self‐management programmes as led and used by mental health user groups. We conclude that self‐help initiatives can make a valuable contribution to addressing work‐related stress if employers support them. Beyond simply ameliorating staff retention problems, the experiential learning communities that could be created could be an asset, particularly in seeking to change workplace cultures to minimise work‐related mental stresses.

This paper aims to outline the extent and cost of work‐related mental ill health and the challenges it causes in the workplace. It focuses on what employers can do to facilitate an early return to work for those absent from work. It argues for a proactive approach to the management of mental ill health in the workplace and highlights the important role of the line manager. Good practice from Europe is reported.

This paper reviews evidence from the HSE, EU_OSHA and IOSH.

Rather than only dealing reactively with cases of mental ill health in the workplace, it is more effective for an employer to adopt a proactive approach, recognising that employees are a valuable asset, assessing psychosocial risks and promoting health and wellbeing. This involves not only protecting their employees from work‐related health and safety risks, but also helping employees with minor conditions to stay at work, for example, by negotiating flexible hours. Employees also need opportunities to look after their own health and wellbeing at work. Finally, it is important to create a culture where working with a mental health condition is accepted by other employees as normal.

The paper highlights the importance of a proactive management approach to managing mental ill health.

In workplace health promotion, enhancing resources are less explored than risk factors. The aim of this paper is to explore the usability of the sense of coherence (SOC) theory to identify considerable and positively perceived work‐related factors and processes.

The study had a salutogenic approach to workplace health promotion. A total of 13 focus group interviews were conducted with hospital employees in Sweden. A deductive analysis was made with the SOC theory as a framework.

Work‐related specific enhancing resources (SER) were identified and analysed into the three components of SOC: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. SER's implication in daily performance is explained by employee expressions. Through increased understanding and awareness, SER could contribute to savoring positive experiences, and enhance SOC among employees. Antonovsky's concept Generalized Resistance Resources is suggested to be enlarged based on the expressed significance of concrete daily positive work occurrences to increase one's SOC.

Not all hospital professions were represented in the study. Further studies are required to involve physicians, paramedics, managers, as well as other settings, to compare and complement with additional experiences of workplace resources.

The study presents an opportunity to explore, understand, and foster workplace resources through assistance from the SOC theory. The SER presented in this study may serve as initial examples in workplace discussions about work‐related resources contributing to a sense of coherence.

This study contributes to public health research and workplace health promotion with a salutogenic focus on how to explore enhancing work‐related resources with the assistance of the practical SOC theory.

The purpose of this paper is to test a model in which emotional and work-related conflicts associated with diabetes contribute to health management efficacy and behaviour.

The authors investigated 193 Korean employees with diabetes in a two-phased longitudinal study (101 participants were retained at Time 2).

After controlling for severity of diabetes (HbA_1C), structural equation modelling revealed that higher work-health conflict (a proxy for demand) and higher inauthenticity at work (a proxy for control) were associated with more diabetes-related distress at Time 1. Results also revealed support for longitudinal mediation, such that more diabetes-related distress at Time 1 predicted lower health management efficacy one year later (at Time 2), which was associated with less health management behaviour at Time 2.

Results support the importance of applying the biopsychosocial perspective to diabetes management through the use of subjective measures of demand and control.

Suggestions are provided for occupational programmes for workers with disease, including on-site education, health-management training, and flexible job redesign such as telecommuting.

Research in workers with diabetes for stress relief and disease management.

Focusing on 420 women employed within the woman-dominated health care sector, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how any variation in their total workload (TWL) in terms of paid and unpaid work relate to various subjective health complaints (SHC) (n=420) and the neuroendocrine stress marker cortisol (n=68).

The authors explored how any variation in their TWL in terms of paid and unpaid work related cross-sectionally to SHC (n=420), and the neuroendocrine stress marker cortisol (n=68).

Hierarchical regression analyses showed that stress of unpaid work was most strongly related to diurnal variations in cortisol. Both stress of paid and unpaid work as well as TWL stress, but not hours spent on TWL, were related to SHC.

Taken together, objective measures of hours spent on various TWL domains were unrelated to outcome measures while perceptions of having too much TWL and TWL stress were linked to both cortisol and SHC, i.e. how individuals perceive a situation seem to be more important for health than the actual situation, which has implications for research and efforts to reduce individual TWL.

This study is unique in showing that unpaid work and perceptions having too much TWL relate to stress markers in women working in the public health care sector.

The purpose of the paper is to consider the opportunities and difficulties in developing health‐promotion work in early years settings in the UK.

As the first study of its kind conducted in the UK, a multi‐method approach was adopted involving: an overview of health‐related guidance and of effective interventions in early years settings to promote health among young children; 26 interviews with key informants in the early years and health fields, regional coordinators for the National Healthy Schools Programme (NHSP) and Foundation Stage regional advisers; a survey of 145 local Healthy Schools Programme coordinators with a response rate of 75 per cent; and six case studies of early years settings representing promising practice in the promotion of health and wellbeing.

There is considerable enthusiasm for health promotion work within early years organisations, and interest in developing such work in early years settings. The study suggests that building on existing early years curriculum frameworks, developing partnerships between health and early years professionals, engaging both parents and practitioners, and adequate national and local resourcing will facilitate development of health promoting work in the early years sector.

This paper and the outputs from the study offer useful evidence for health and early years professionals who are developing health‐promoting work in early years settings.

The paper reports on the first study of its kind in which the perceptions of both early years and health professionals are brought together to consider the issues involved in developing healthy early years practice.