Evidence for psychological health and safety

We’ve gathered the following peer reviewed research to show how psychosocial factors can support specific business goals, such as improving sales, reducing absenteeism, increasing productivity and retaining talent.

A major factor in the success of an organization is its culture. Organizational culture can significantly influence the performance and effectiveness of a company; the morale and productivity of its employees; and its ability to attract, motivate, and retain talented people. (Warrick, 2017, p.395)¹

We’ve developed these key messages as plain language based on the research findings. Direct quotes and citations from the research follow.

Resolving conflict, addressing discrimination and preventing bullying or harassment

Key messages from the research:

• Bullying predicts psychological health problems, including depression, anxiety, emotional exhaustion and traumatic stress, and contributes to physical health problems such as poor cardiovascular health. 
• A climate of psychosocial safety in an organization decreases the likelihood of bullying. Bullying increases employee absence, turnover rates, and workers’ compensation claims.
• A climate of psychosocial safety creates a positive work environment in which employees experience less stress, which can help them become more committed to their jobs.

Relevant statistics:

• The consequences of harassment may range from negatively impacting one's attitude toward their job, in terms of their level of satisfaction and their level of commitment, to poorer physical and psychological wellbeing.²  
• 40% of Canadian workers experience bullying on a weekly basis.³  
• In Canada, the highest rates of workplace harassment are found in health occupations and unionized jobs.⁴  

Direct quotes from the research

Dollard, M. F., Dormann, C., Tuckey, M. R., & Escartín, J. (2017). Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and enacted PSC for workplace bullying and psychological health problem reduction. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(6), 844–857. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2017.1380626

• [Psychosocial safety climate] is a specific aspect of organizational climate, defined as “policies, practices, and procedures for worker psychological health and safety” (Dollard & Bakker, 2010, p. 580). PSC is largely determined by management and leadership within organizations. The PSC construct has four main aspects (Dollard & Bakker, 2010; Hall, Dollard, & Coward, 2010) that connect to best practice principles in the stress prevention, intervention, and safety climate literatures (Cheyne, Cox, Oliver, & Tomás, 1998; Dollard & Kang, 2007; Kompier & Kristensen, 2001). First is senior management support and commitment to psychological health through involvement and commitment (Dollard, Tuckey, & Dormann, 2012). This aspect is evident when senior management take quick and decisive action to address and correct issues that affect psychological health (Idris, Dollard, Coward, & Dormann, 2012). Second is priority the management give to employee psychological health and safety versus productivity goals (Hall et al., 2010). For example, job demands (e.g., work pressure) may be modified to make them more manageable, and management have the discretion to offer a variety of resources, such as work flexibility, autonomy, and social support that may buffer demands and reduce work stress in the interests of worker psychological health and productivity. Third is organizational communication (Hall et al., 2010) that concerns how the organization communicates with employees about psychological health and safety issues that affect them, and brings these to the attention of employees. The final aspect, organizational participation and involvement, concerns participation and consultation regarding stress prevention that involves all levels of the organization, and the integration of stakeholders including employees, unions and health and safety representatives in occupational (psychological) health and safety processes (Idris et al., 2012).
• Ultimately, building a strong climate for psychological health is fundamental to bullying prevention.

Teo, S. T. T., Bently, T., & Nguyen, D. (2020). Psychosocial work environment, work engagement, and employee commitment: A moderated, mediation model. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2019.102415

• The findings indicate that to maximize the positive effects of High Performance Work Systems on wellbeing of hospitality employees, the development of [psychosocial safety climate] plays an important role in strengthening a safe and positive environment where perceptions of stress and bullying are reduced, thereby promoting a high degree of reciprocal affective commitment behaviors from employees.
• [Psychosocial safety climate] can, therefore, be operationalized as an important, effective, and potent organizational intervention to reduce the negative impacts of bullying in the High Performance Work Systems, affective commitment relationship in the hospitality context as it is characterized by stressful working conditions, and high psychological and emotional demands associating with customer service.

Emotional intelligence for working relationships, customer service and sales

Key messages from the research:

• High emotional intelligence improves a team’s communication and social bonding, which helps bridge the distance between dispersed teams, as well as reduce and manage conflict.
• Emotional intelligence helps salespeople perform better and manage customer relations, as well as relationships with back-office functions.
• When employees have customer-facing roles, higher emotional intelligence helps them have higher customer satisfaction.  
• Higher levels of emotional intelligence improve employees’ mental health, work engagement, working relationships and support in the workplace. 
• Emotional intelligence directly impacts the success of a project.

Direct quotes from the research

Leonidou, L. C., Aykol, B., Fotiadis, T. A., Zeriti, A., & Christodoulides, P. (2019). The role of exporters’ emotional intelligence in building foreign customer relationships. Journal of International Marketing, 27(4), 58–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069031X19876642 

• Higher levels of exporter emotional intelligence enhance communication and social bonding with the importer while diminishing distance and conflict in their working relationship.

Ayoko, O. B., Callan, V. J., & Härtel, C. E. J. (2008). The influence of team emotional intelligence climate on conflict and team members' reactions to conflict. Small Group Research, 39(2), 121–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496407304921 

• Teams with less-well-defined emotional intelligence climates were associated with increased task and relationship conflict and increased conflict intensity. In addition, team emotional intelligence climate, especially conflict management norms, moderated the link between task conflict and destructive reactions to conflict.

Kernbach, S., & Schutte, N. S. (2005). The impact of service provider emotional intelligence on customer satisfaction. Journal of Services Marketing, 19(7), 438–444. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040510625945 

• Salespeople’s customer orientation directly affects customer-related organisational performance; the relationship is moderated by salespeople’s emotional intelligence. The emotional intelligence of salespeople also directly affects the customer-directed citizenship behaviour of back-office employees. Furthermore, the emotional intelligence of back-office staff moderates the link between the emotional intelligence of salespeople and back-office staff citizenship behaviour. Back-office staff citizenship behaviour, in turn, affects customer-related organisational performance.
• Higher emotional intelligence displayed by the service provider led to greater reported satisfaction with the service transaction. Further, there was an interaction between emotional intelligence of the service provider and transaction difficulty. In the low transaction difficulty condition there was progressively more satisfaction at each higher level of emotional intelligence of the service provider. In the high transaction difficulty condition, there was low satisfaction in the low service provider emotional intelligence condition, but no significant difference in satisfaction between the high and medium levels of service provider emotional intelligence.

Kearney, T., Walsh, G., Barnett, W., Gong, T., Schwabe, M., & Ifie, K. (2017). Emotional intelligence in front-line/back-office employee relationships. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-09-2016-0339 

• Salespeople’s customer orientation directly affects customer-related organisational performance; the relationship is moderated by salespeople’s emotional intelligence. 
• The emotional intelligence of salespeople also directly affects the customer-directed citizenship behaviour of back-office employees. 
• Emotional intelligence of back-office staff moderates the link between the emotional intelligence of salespeople and back-office staff citizenship behaviour. 
• Back-office staff citizenship behaviour, in turn, affects customer-related organisational performance.

Miao, C., Humphrey, R. H., & Qian, S. (2017). A meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and work attitudes. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 90(2), 177–202. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12167 

• Higher levels of emotional intelligence are also associated with a variety of interpersonal outcomes, including more cooperative behaviour (Schutte et al., 2001), better interpersonal relationships (Lopes et al., 2004; Lopes, Salovey, & Straus, 2003), and more relationship satisfaction (Lopes et al., 2003; Malouff, Schutte, & Thorsteinsson, 2014).

Schutte, N. S., & Loi, N. M. (2014). Connections between emotional intelligence and workplace flourishing. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, 134–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.03.031 

• Responses from 319 working adults recruited from the United States and Australia showed that higher emotional intelligence was significantly related to better mental health, more work engagement, more satisfaction with social support in the workplace, and more perceived power in the workplace.

Maqbool, R., Sudong, Y., Manzoor, N., & Rashid, Y. (2017). The impact of emotional intelligence, project managers’ competencies, and transformational leadership on project success: An empirical perspective, Project Management Journal, 48(3), 58–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697281704800304 

• (1) Emotional intelligence has a direct positive impact on the success of projects, (2) project managers’ competencies have direct impacts on project success, and (3) project managers’ transformational leadership behavior has a direct positive impact on project success. Thus, the success of a project isn’t just all about state-of-the-art equipment or the latest inventions, but it is also about people and their behaviors as well as competencies, which are the main driving forces behind success.

How mental health and well-being impact engagement and productivity

Key messages from below:

• Employees who have good physical, mental and emotional health are better able to stay productive for longer periods.
• Employees in work environments with low levels of psychosocial health tend to have more negative health outcomes and reduced productivity and engagement.
• When employees feel supported by the organization, their sense of well-being improves, their performance goes up and absenteeism and turnover are reduced.  

Relevant statistics:

• At least 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental health problem or illness annually, and 50% of Canadians will experience a mental health problem or illness by the age of 40.⁵
• In a 2017 survey, 34% of over 1000 working Canadians said that workplace stress was the main source of their mental health problem or illness.⁶

Direct quotes from the research

Bajorek, Z., & Holmes, J. (2020). Health and wellbeing interventions in healthcare: A rapid evidence review. Institute for Employment Studies, 1–27. https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/files/556.pdf

• West and Dawson (2012), highlighted the importance of wellbeing and employee engagement and implications for patient outcomes finding that… Higher levels of wellbeing and engagement had significantly higher patient satisfaction and service quality ratings, reduced mortality and reduced infection rates.

Adams, J. M. (2019) The value of worker well-being. Public Health Reports, 134(6), 583–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354919878434  

• Research shows that employees who are in good physical, mental, and emotional health are more likely to deliver optimal performance in the workplace than employees who are not.

Vecchio, N., Schuffham, P., & Whiteford, H. (2010). Using the interaction of mental health symptoms and treatment status to estimate lost employee productivity. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 44(2), 151–161. https://doi.org/10.3109/00048670903393605 

• Treatment of mental disorders that reduces symptom levels to low K6 values returns employee productivity to near, but not the same as, the productivity of asymptomatic individuals with no prior history of a mental disorder (6.4% productivity difference between the groups).

Ramkissoon, A., Smith, P., & Oudyk, J. (2019). Dissecting the effect of workplace exposures on workers’ rating of psychological health and safety. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 62(5), 412–421. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajim.22964 

• Poor psychosocial health and safety has been associated with negative health outcomes among workers, as well as impacts on workplace productivity through reduced employee engagement, and less shared problem solving.^{7, 8}

Eisenberger, R., Malone, G. P., & Presson, W. D. (2016). Optimizing perceived organizational support to enhance employee engagement. Society for Human Resource Management and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2–22. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/SHRM-SIOP%20Perceived%20Organizational%20Support.pdf

• Evidence-based research consistently shows that [perceived organizational support] is linked to employees’ increased psychological well-being and performance plus reduced absenteeism and turnover. 

The ROI in workplace mental health programs: Good for people, good for business. (2019). Deloitte Development LLC, 1–36. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/about-deloitte/ca-en-about-blueprint-for-workplace-mental-health-final-aoda.pdf

• Figure 1. Estimated cost of poor mental health in the workplace in Canada. Annual indirect cost related to lost productivity in CAD: $6 billion. 
• Figure 2. Mental health issues lead to both direct and indirect economic costs. Indirect costs: Absenteeism, presenteeism (i.e., attending work while unwell but with reduced productivity), employee turnover.
• A comparative study of the stock performance of companies represented on the S&P 500 Index found those with high health and wellness scores (based on associated program delivery in the work-place) appreciated by 235 percent, compared with the overall S&P 500 Index appreciation of 159 percent over a six-year period.

Susaki, N., Kuroda, R., Tsuno, K., & Kawakami, N. (2020) Workplace responses to COVID-19 associated with mental health and work performance of employees in Japan. Journal of Occupational Health, 62(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/1348-9585.12134

• Workplace measures may promote and maintain the mental health and work performance of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. The positive association between the number of measures and fear and worry about COVID-19 may reflect increased awareness about COVID-19 among employees resulted from taking the measures.

Ott-Holland, C. J., Shepherd, W. J., & Ryan, A. M. (2019). Examining wellness programs over time: Predicting participation and workplace outcomes. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 24(1), 163–179. DOI: 10.1037/ocp0000096

• Perceived organizational support positively predicts participation in employee wellness programs... Participation in employee wellness programs (including health assessment, personalized wellness plan, contact with health advisors and lifestyle coaches) predicts higher performance ratings and lower turnover (both voluntary and involuntary) one year later.

Allen, R., Watt, F., Jansen, B., Coghlan, E., & Nathan, E. A. (2017). Minimising compassion fatigue in obstetrics/gynaecology doctors: Exploring an intervention for an occupational hazard. Australasian Psychiatry, 25(4), 403–406. DOI: 10.1177/1039856217700776

• Group-based interventions led by mental health professionals may improve symptoms of burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue among healthcare workers.

Bronkhorst, B., & Vermeeren, B. (2016). Safety climate, worker health and organizational health performance: Testing a physical, psychosocial and combined pathway. International Journal of Workplace Health Management, 9(3), 270-289. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-12-2015-0081

• Perceived psychosocial safety climate predicts lower absenteeism through its negative effects on emotional exhaustion.

How psychologically safe policies and programs protect reputation and improve recruiting and retention

Key messages from the research:

• Psychologically unsafe workplaces can lead to a higher number of compensation claims related to bullying/harassment/violence, work pressure and emotional exhaustion.
• Workers who feel healthy and safe at work are more likely to be committed to their organization.
• Human resources practices that promote and protect psychological health and safety at work lead to greater employee retention.

Direct quotes from the research

Braedley, S., Owusu, P., Przednowek, A. et al. (2018). We’re told, ‘suck it up’: Long-term care workers’ psychological health and safety. Ageing Int, 43, 91–109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-017-9288-4 

• Workplaces tend to deal with workers’ mental health issues through what LaMontagne et al. (2014) describe as secondary or ameliorative interventions which aim to improve workers’ coping, and/or tertiary interventions that support rehabilitation after injury (p.133). Most employers rely upon employee assistance programs that include individual counselling or psychological services (Page et al. 2013). These policies do nothing to address primary prevention, aimed at “reducing workplace stressors at their source” (ibid), although systematic reviews have shown repeatedly that these measures are the most effective interventions (Egan et al. 2007, Martin et al. 2009, Tan et al. 2014).

Geisler, M., Berthelsen, H., & Muhonen, T. (2019). Retaining social workers: The role of quality of work and psychosocial safety climate for work engagement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 43(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2019.1569574

• We found that, in our model, [psychosocial safety climate] was... a significant predictor for job satisfaction [identified by the authors, and substantiated, as a core to retention].

Bailey, T. S., Dollard, M. F., McLinton, S. S., & Richards, P. A. M. (2015). Psychosocial safety climate, psychosocial and physical factors in the aetiology of musculoskeletal disorder symptoms and workplace injury compensation claims. Work & Stress, 29(2), 190-211. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2015.1031855 

• Occupational health and safety legislators and policy makers should be aware that, beyond physical demands, factors usually associated with risk for mental stress claims (e.g. harassment, bullying, and violence) may additionally manifest in physical health problems and workers' compensation injury claims. 

Amponsah-Tawiah, K., & Mensah, J. (2016). Occupational health and safety and organizational commitment: Evidence from the ghanaian mining industry.

Safety and Health at Work, 7(3) 225–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shaw.2016.01.002 

• The findings of this study revealed positive and significant relationship between occupational health and safety management, and affective, normative, and continuance commitment. Additionally, the results revealed the significant impact of occupational health and safety on affective, normative, and continuance commitment.
• Management within the mining sector of Ghana must recognize the fact that workers who feel healthy and safe in the performance of their duties, develop emotional attachment and have a sense of obligation to their organization and are most likely committed to the organization. Employees do not just become committed to the organization; rather, they expect management to first think about their health and safety needs by instituting good and sound policy measures.

Imna, M., & Hassan, Z. (2015). Influence of human resource management practices on employee retention in maldives retail industry. International Journal of Accounting, Business and Management, 3(1), 54–87. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Malik-Osama-2/publication/346900574_hr_policies/links/5fd1e6ea92851c00f8627360/hr-policies.pdf

• The main research aim of this study is to evaluate the influence of human resource management practices on employee retention in Maldives Retail Industry. The objectives derived are as listed below:
  • To examine the effect of career development on employee retention.
  • To examine the effect of practicing performance appraisal on employee retention.
  • To examine the effect of training and development on employee retention.
  • To examine the effect of reward and compensation on employee retention.
  • To examine the effect of adopting health and safely [sic] in organizations on employee retention.

  ....

• Conclusion…Health and safety has a positive and significant influence on employee retention. 

How resilience and the ability to bounce back from work stressors leads to reduced absenteeism and improved performance

Organization studies often focus on theoretical research on workplace resilience – for employees and organizations – but leave out empirical work. However, some studies, though largely based on self-report data, have investigated the relationship between resilience and workplace stress. They found that resilience helps employees cope and can be fostered when employees have support from their organization.

Key messages from the research:

• Workers with higher levels of resilience are more productive and have fewer absences than those with lower levels of resilience.
• Employees who have access to resources are more engaged in and enthusiastic about their work and persistent when they face challenges and hindrances.
• Employees with more resilience have better responses to stress, even in difficult work situations.

Relevant statistics:

• Workers with high resilience have 10% to 20% lower rates of depression, absence, and productivity loss.

Direct quotes from the research

Yasaswi N.W., & Arambepola, C.  (2020). High resilience leads to better work performance in nurses: Evidence from South Asia. Journal of Nursing Management, 28(2), 342–350. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12930

• The total resilience scale score demonstrated significant and strong positive correlations with all subdomains of nursing performance, as well as with overall performance (p < .05). In linear regression model, six out of seven subscales in resilience scale predicted 70.5% of variance of work performance.
• Higher resilience level at work is associated with better working performance among nurses.

Cooper, C. L., & Cartwright, S. (1994). Healthy mind; Healthy organization— A proactive approach to occupational stress. Human Relations, 47(4), 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679404700405

• The costs of stress incurred to organizations include increased health-care expenses, compensation payments, lost productivity, and turnover.

Shatté, A., Perlman, A., Smith, B., & Lynch, W. D. (2017). The positive effect of resilience on stress and business outcomes in difficult work environments. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59(2), 135–140. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000000914

• Higher levels of resilience were found to have beneficial effects on worker's perceptions of stress, psychological responses to stress, and job-related behaviors related to stress regardless of difficult environments. Faced with especially difficult work environments, workers with higher levels of resilience seem able to avoid absences and be more productive than workers with low resilience.
• Consistent with other research findings, psychological resilience has an independent, favorable association with all eight work outcomes in this study. Plus, uniformly across all outcomes, the favorable effect of resilience remained significant regardless of work environment scenarios. As seen in Fig.1 A–H, individuals with lower resilience reported worse psychological and work outcomes, across both high-strain and low-strain work environments. The most notable effects of resilience are the 10% to 20% lower rates in likely depression, absence, and productivity loss when resilience is high.

Bakker, A. B. (2017). Strategic and proactive approaches to work engagement. Organizational Dynamics, 46(2), 67-75. DOI:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2017.04.002 

• Engaged employees “have an abundance of resources,” which they can invest in their work. They are enthusiastic about their work, immersed in their work activities, and persistent when confronted with challenges and hindrances. Moreover, research of the past decade has provided strong evidence for the notion that engagement leads to key organizational outcomes, including creativity and innovation, client satisfaction, positive financial results, and reduced sickness absenteeism.

Supportive performance management, including team building and individual employee support

Key messages from the research:

• When employees feel supported at work, absenteeism and turnover go down and employee well-being and performance go up. 
• When leaders take up good psychological health and safety practices, employees become more motivated.
• When managers implement psychological health and safety practices, employees of “lower rank” feel more comfortable making changes. 
• Employees become more bonded to their organization when they feel supported, that their contributions are valued and that the organization cares about them.

Direct quotes from the research

Eisenberger, R., Malone, G. P., & Presson, W. D. (2016). Optimizing perceived organizational support to enhance employee engagement. Society for Human Resource Management and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2–22. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/special-reports-and-expert-views/Documents/SHRM-SIOP%20Perceived%20Organizational%20Support.pdf

• Perceived organizational support (POS)—an employee’s perception that the organization values his or her work contributions and cares about the employee’s well-being—has been shown to have important benefits for employees and employers. For instance, studies have found that employees with high POS suffer less stress at work… are more inclined to return to work sooner after injury… [and] high POS positively relates to performance (Kurtessis et al., 2015; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).

Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., Patrick, K. J., & Ryan, R. M. (2018). Leader autonomy support in the workplace: A meta-analytic review. Motivation and Emotion, 42, 706–724. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-018-9698-y

• Leader autonomy support (LAS) refers to a cluster of supervisory behaviors that are theorized to facilitate self-determined motivation in employees, potentially enabling well-being and performance… Results showed LAS correlated strongly and positively with autonomous work motivation… [and] positively associated with basic needs, well-being, and positive work behaviors, and was negatively associated with distress.

Bindl, U. K. (2019). Work-related proactivity through the lens of narrative: Investigating emotional journeys in the process of making things happen. Human Relations, 72(4), 615–645. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718778086 

• An important part of a workplace where growth and development are present is that its “supervisors are open to worker ideas for taking on new opportunities and challenges.” For lower ranked employees, managerial support is critical. These workers require “input from their managers to implement changes and reported high levels of negative emotions in connection with how others perceived, supported and approved their initiatives” (p. 640).
• Because there are more negative feelings associated with taking on new opportunities, supervisor support is critical not only for their success but their well-being throughout the process. 

Kurtessis, J. N., Eisenberger, R., Ford, M. T., Buffardi, L. C., Stewart, K. A., & Adis, C. S. (2017). Perceived organizational support: A meta-analytic evaluation of organizational support theory. Journal of Management, 43(6), 1854–1884. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206315575554

• The results suggest that [perceived organizational support] plays a central role in the employee–organization relationship and has important implications for improving employees’ well-being and favorable orientation toward the organization. 

Lacerenza, C. N., Reyes, D. L., Marlow, S. L., Joseph, D. L., & Salas, E. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686–1718. DOI:10.1037/apl0000241

• Employees who perceive a high degree of organizational support will exhibit increased motivation and interest in training, as they believe the organization will subsequently provide the support they need to apply training to the job.

Pitichat, T., Reichard, R. J., Kea-Edwards, A., Middleton, E., & Norman, S. M. (2018). Psychological capital for leader development. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 25(1), 47–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051817719232 

• [Leaders who believe the organization cares about them] are more likely to overcome setbacks toward their development and establish multiple pathways to develop....  When an organization is perceived to care about a leader’s input, it can make a leader feel valued and make them believe that they can improve as a leader.

Dollard, M. F., & Bailey, T. (2021). Building psychosocial safety climate in turbulent times: The case of COVID-19. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(7), 951–964. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000939

• The process evaluation revealed that the planned intervention was useful and informative, increased understanding of [Psychosocial Safety Climate] PSC and work risks, and prepared middle managers for the impact of COVID-19 even in the face of challenges (73% reported increased demands in shock)… Normalizing the mental health response to chronic stress situations should help people participate in systems and routinely communicate about risks to psychological health. The link between external imperatives (shock) and organizational responses also implies that other externalities such as legal requirements for safe PSC levels could promote future positive corporate responses. We should not rely on shock to build PSC.

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