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This paper aims to present the baseline results of a research and development project targeted to improve the occupational well‐being of school staff and maintain their ability to work, in Finland and Estonia. It reveals the most problematic factors in the various aspects of the school community and professional competence and outlines development needs in the school communities.

The overall project design is action research, conducted during 2009‐2013 in the SHE (Schools for Health in Europe) network in Finland and Estonia. The baseline survey data were collected in 2009‐2010 with a web‐based Well‐being at your work index questionnaire and analysed statistically using descriptive statistics, sum variables of factors and Mann‐Whitney tests.

The general opinions of the Finnish school staffs were more affirmative than those of Estonian school staffs regarding their own personal occupational well‐being in comparison with the best in the profession (p=0.000). However, the Finns were more critical than the Estonians when estimating the general well‐being of the staff in their working community, maintenance of their ability to work, the aspects of the school community and professional competence and development needs in the school communities.

The results cannot be widely generalised due to the geographically defined samples, but they can be suggestive in comparable situations in Finland and Estonia.

There is a need to develop the occupational well‐being of school staff and maintenance of their ability to work in the school communities: specific interventions will be developed on the basis of the results obtained from the project schools.

This chapter explores religion and spirituality as a form and source of demographic differences relevant to the study of occupational stress and well-being. The purpose of the chapter is to provide a resource and starting point to occupational health and stress researchers who may be interested in religion/spirituality. A review of critical religion/spirituality concepts is provided, along with a discussion of how religion/spirituality can be integrated into common occupational stress theories and reconciled with commonly studied variables within this domain. A series of future research directions involving religion/spirituality and occupational health and stress are ultimately presented.

The current conceptualizations and measurements of well-being are inadequate in the context of work. Specifically, well-being research has neglected the social aspects of well-being. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the validity of a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being.

Data were collected in an educational setting, i.e. six different schools in a Swedish municipality. A total of 314 teachers and other categories of school staff (239 females and 75 males) participated in a survey study.

Results provided empirical support for a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being. The dimensions were integration, acceptance, contribution, actualization and coherence, and they were differentially correlated with previous measures of well-being. Furthermore, occupational social well-being accounted for additional variance in work tension, overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment over and above the variance accounted for by positive and negative affect and satisfaction with life, indicating the value of taking domain-specific social indicators of well-being into account in explaining various employee outcomes.

Occupational social well-being is an umbrella term for describing the well-lived social life in the context of work. As such, this is a crucial part of a holistic view of well-being at work. Thus, effective employee well-being enhancement programs should not only focus on physical and mental health promotion or competence development but must also include measures of relational experience and functioning as discussed in the present study.

This is the first study to measure and validate occupational social well-being as an attempt to complement existing measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Measures of social aspects of well-being are crucial to assess as it has been argued in previous research that context-free measures of well-being might render misleading results.

The process of occupational stress is dynamic, and thus must be conceptualized through an intraindividual perspective. Theories of self-regulation model feedback loops in goal pursuit and have meaningful implications for occupational well-being, from the task-level to years across the career span. In particular, discrepancy (the distance between one’s actual and desired states) and velocity (the speed at which one is moving towards a desired state) influence reactions in goal-striving. We extend theory bridging the self-regulation, occupational health, and career literatures by outlining the effects of discrepancy and velocity feedback for well-being, which we ground in cybernetic theories of stress, coping, and well-being. Further, we consider change at the macro scale by delimiting the impact of velocity, experienced in the pursuit of goals across Super’s (1980) career stages, on worker health. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of velocity and health over the career stages.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of paternalistic leadership behaviour in the Finnish organisational context by investigating its relationship with Chinese immigrant employees’ occupational well-being.

This research was based on a survey of 117 Chinese immigrants working in Finland. The snowball sampling method was adopted in the present research.

The findings show that the dimensions of paternalistic leadership, specifically benevolent leadership behaviour, can be influential in Chinese immigrant knowledge workers’ occupational well-being in the Finnish organisational context.

Paternalistic leadership style can also make sense in a Western organisational context, especially when dealing with well-being among immigrant employees from China or other Asian countries.

Some misunderstanding of paternalistic leadership behaviour in Western societies may impede the theory’s further development. The study enhanced the understanding of paternalism in the Finnish organisational context by illuminating the effect of paternalistic leadership on Chinese immigrant employees’ occupational well-being.

The purpose of this project was to examine the extent to which early-career women faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) experience working in a chilly interpersonal climate (as indicated by experiences of ostracism and incivility) and how those experiences relate to work and non-work well-being outcomes.

Data came from a sample of 96 early-career STEM faculty (Study 1) and a sample of 68 early-career women STEM faculty (Study 2). Both samples completed online surveys assessing their experiences of working in a chilly interpersonal climate and well-being.

In Study 1, early-career women STEM faculty reported greater experiences of ostracism and incivility and more negative occupational well-being outcomes associated with these experiences compared to early-career men STEM faculty. In Study 2, early-career women STEM faculty reported more ostracism and incivility from their male colleagues than from their female colleagues. Experiences of ostracism (and, to a lesser extent, incivility) from male colleagues also related to negative occupational and psychological well-being outcomes.

This paper documents that exposure to a chilly interpersonal climate in the form of ostracism and incivility is a potential explanation for the lack and withdrawal of junior women faculty in STEM academic fields.

Work environments are undergoing a transition and COVID-19 accelerated this change. Prior studies have associated various physical, digital and social work environment elements with occupational well-being. However, holistic approaches to the social work environment to compare the effects of the different elements have received less attention. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of various social work environment elements with hybrid worker well-being. The findings help organizations design their work environments and cultures for the post-COVID era.

The study builds on a quantitative survey with 1,057 respondents. The respondents were randomly selected, the answers were anonymous and the results were based on regression analysis.

The analysis indicated that working methods and practices, leadership and management practices, organizational communality and social interaction associate with hybrid worker well-being. Organizational values, reward systems and organizational structures yield no association with hybrid worker well-being.

The value of this paper is in that it investigates elements of the social work environment, presents a research model that examines the relationship of social work environment elements with hybrid worker well-being and provides new empirical data on their implications in a comparative manner.

The aim of the present study is to give insights into the interplay between leadership, well‐being and occupational success by examining the indirect effect of transformational leadership on subjective occupational success mediated by work engagement.

A gender‐sensitive approach was applied in order to reveal possible differences in the relations and to deduce gender‐specific recommendations. Data were retrieved from 530 women and 602 men. The participants were questioned on their leader's behavior, their work engagement, and occupational success.

Results show significant positive relations between transformational leadership, work engagement, and subjective occupational success for men and women. Work engagement is found to partially mediate the relation between transformational leadership and subjective occupational success. A significantly higher mediation effect was found for women, although the mediation is present in both gender groups.

Both for men and women transformational leadership training, as well as interventions promoting work engagement, are promising approaches for the enhancement of occupational success.

The findings advance the understanding of how leaders enhance employees' occupational success and provide gender‐specific insights into the mediating mechanism of work engagement regarding this relation.

Digitization is reshaping the functioning of educational institutions. Large attention has been paid to the innovative service models enabled by digitization. However, the implications of digitization on employees’ well-being need further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of digitization on psycho-social risks at work in a large sample of European educational institutions.

Secondary data were collected from the third wave of the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER). A serial mediation model was designed to obtain evidence on the implications of digitization on the psycho-social risks at work in 3,540 educational institutions. Alongside the direct implications of digitization on psycho-social risks, its indirect effects mediated by occupational health interventions and healthy workplace initiatives were investigated.

Digitization exacerbated psycho-social stressors at work. Increasing time pressures and intensifying work, digitization imperiled the employees’ well-being. Occupational health partially mediated the implications of digitization on psycho-social risks. Although healthy workplace interventions seemed to prevent the side effects of digitization on psycho-social risk, its mediating role was not statistically significant.

Digitization should be accompanied by interventions aimed at ensuring occupational health and at promoting a healthy workplace to minimize its drawbacks on psycho-social risks. Occupational health creates a greater awareness of the negative effects of digitization on work-related stressors. Healthy workplace initiatives contribute to enhancing the employees’ psycho-physical well-being.

This study reports the negative implications of digitization on psycho-social risks at work in educational institutions, envisioning some avenues for further development.