Psychosocial Factors in the Workplace
The interaction between psychological and social factors in predicting individual and societal outcomes has been studied for many years, with a host of different models having been developed to understand how different personal and workplace factors interact, buffer, or exacerbate positive and negative experiences and outcomes for different people (Mark, 2008; Mark & Smith, 2008).
Job characteristics, such as workplace control, demands, support, rewards, and individual factors like motivation, ways of coping, attributional style, and self-efficacy, have all been implicated in the prediction of outcomes, such as stress-related illness, job satisfaction, sickness absence, and many physical and mental health problems (Karasek, 1979; Siegrist, 1996; Folkman & Lazarus, 1980; Mark & Smith, 2008; Cox & Griffiths, 1995; Gianakos, 2002). Indeed, sickness absence has been estimated to cost many billions of pounds per year worldwide. Over 140 million working days are lost per year in the UK alone, with stress being one of the most significant contributors (CBI, 2018).
Models of Psychosocial Factors and Stress at Work
Many models have been developed within academia to focus on workplace stress, which is defined not as an outcome, but usually, as a psychological process that occurs when individuals encounter stressors in their environment and seek to cope with them, with failure potentially leading to stress-related illness and poor organizational outcomes (Cox, Griffiths & Rial-Gonzales, 2000; Cox & Mackay, 1981; Mark & Smith, 2008). Many models have focused on environmental workplace factors, while others have looked at psychological processes, but rarely have both been considered in the same conceptualization. However, it is argued that both up-to-date models of stress and industrial implementations around employee engagement should include such individual difference factors to improve understanding and prediction of outcomes. A short historical review of key models is provided below.