Organizational Health Psychology

Organizational Health Psychology Group Member: ANDREW HENG AS100193 BAKTHIAR RIDHWAN B. BACHIRAN AS100153 KOH CHEE CHUNG AS100208 HONG CHAN CHIN AS100204

ABSTRACT • Organizational health psychology(OHP) is the area of psychology concerned with creating healthy and safe work. Three important topics in the area are Work safety and disease prevention, Health promotion in the workplace and Promotion of work-family balance.

Work Safety • The safety and health of employee during work or at work place • Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is a government agency which objective is to assure safe and healthful condition for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards by providing training, outreach, education and assistance. • OSHA is responsible for enforcing their workplace health and safety level. • Send officers to work site; carry out inspections and assess fines for regulatory violations.

In Malaysia, there is Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), under Ministry of Human Resources • Responsible for ensuring the safety, health and welfare of people at work as well as protecting other people from the safety and health hazard in both public and private sector • Objectives: prevent industrial accidents and occupational diseases

Workplace Safety These are factors that can cause tragedy and make workplace become danger to worker.

Employee safety The factor of workplace become danger cause by workers

How to IMPROVE WORK SAFETY Programs to increase work safety may involve: • Emphasizing safety procedures • Employee training & education on safety and proper equipment use • Organizational behaviour modification and goal-setting principles • Safety task forces or comittees • Stress inoculation • Background checks • Safety tips

DISEASE PREVENTION IN WORKPLACE • Disease prevention means eradicating, eliminating or minimizing the impact of disease and disability, or if none of these are feasible, retarding the progress of the disease and disability. • Workplace disease can be divided into 2 type: 1. contagious disease 2. chronic disease • A contagious disease is a infectious diseases (or communicable diseases), which are easily transmitted by physical contact with the person suffering the disease, or by their secretions or objects touched by them • There is another type of workplace disease called chronic disease. Chronic disease is a disease that is persistent or long-lasting in its effects. Example of chronic disease are arthritis, asthma, cancer and diabetes.

FACTOR • Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis – are among the most common, costly, and preventable of all health problems in the world. • The main Factor that many workers getting chronic disease nowadays is most adults spend half of their waking hours at work, this cause stress among them. Due to this factor, they will apply an unhealthy lifestyle such as unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use, the harmful use of alcohol. • Contagious disease also cause a severe negative effect on healthy workplace. Some of the factors that cause the spread of contagious disease are food and water supply, sanitation facilities, climate ( low air circulation).

How to prevent contagious disease?? • Making sure there is adequate air circulation in the workplace. • Posting tips on how to stop the spread of germs at work in prominent places within the facility where all employees have access (such as lunchrooms or restrooms). • Ensuring that all employees wash their hands regularly and cover their mouths and noses when coughing or sneezing. • Keeping hand sanitizer readily available throughout the facility for employees, visitors, and others to use frequently. • Informing employees about disease, the spread of disease, as well as steps the facility is taking to prepare for any possible outbreaks. • Developing policies that enable employees to work from home, such as creating appropriate security and network access to files, telephones, and other telecommuting features (when applicable). • Encouraging sick workers to stay home. • Making sure sick leave, medical leave, and family leave policies are updated and in place. Fear of lost wages is one of the main reasons workers come to work when they are ill.

HOW TO PREVENT CHRONIC DISEASE • public health programs are important to educating the public • promoting healthy lifestyles such as doing exercise regularly • Don’t smoke • Have a balance diet everyday by following the food pyramid. • Take less alcoholic drink or better prevent alcoholic drink. • Body check regularly

Health promotion in the workplace • Workplace health promotion (WHP) is the combined efforts of employers, employees and society to improve the health and wellbeing of people at work. • This is achieved through a combination of: • Improving the work organisation and working environment • Promoting the participation of workers in the whole process of WHP • Enabling healthy choices • Encouraging personal development

There are many areas where health promotion in the workplace which is very effective. Such as health promotion, heart health, nutrition, fitness, recreation, tobacco and alcohol awareness and workplace safety. • For example: • Preventing a negative impact of tobacco smoke in the workplace • Effect of tobacco smoke • It can cause serious problems such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and have adverse reproductive effects. Furthermore it can cause death due to cancers (particularly lung cancer), coronary heart disease or stroke.

Solution on preventing a negative impact of tobacco smoke in the workplace • An employer can eliminate exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) by introducing a smoke-free policy and support smoking workers by establishing a smoking cessation programme. • A smoking worker should be considerate and not to expose a co-worker, and take advantage of smoking cessation programmes to quit smoking. • A non-smoking worker can raise the issue with the employer and a smoking colleague to have a smoke-free workplace.

Advantages of workplace health promotion programs • With a health promotion program in workplace • Increase employee and worker morale by creating a supportive and happier working environment • Improve job satisfaction among workers and staff • lower health care costs • reduce the effects of stress • Through the workplace health promotion programs, the employees will perform better in their work. As consequently which will increases the productivity and income of a company.

Work-Family Balance • “the extent to which individuals are equally involved in and equally satisfied with their work role and their family role.” -(Greenhaus & Singh, Collins & Shaw, 2003). • “low levels of inter-role conflict and high levels of inter-role facilitation represent work-family balance.”- (Frone, 2003:145) • Three components were assessed: • Time balance • Involvement balance • Satisfaction balance

Consequences UnbalancedWork-Family Cons • Fired / Sacked • Lost promotion opportunity Pros • High paid salary • Satisfaction in job Cons • Family conflict • Kinship drift apart • Lack of entertainment Pros • Release stress • Healthy lifestyle

Manage Work-Family Balance • Personal actions: • Plan time wisely • Company actions: • Flexible work hours/work weeks • Telecommunicating work • On-site childcare • Government actions: • changes in weekly work hours • protecting benefits of part-time workers • government-subsidized childcare

Reference • Greenhaus, J. & Singh, R. (2003, February 25). Work-Family Linkages, A Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia Entry. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College. • Frone, M. R. (2003). Work-family balance. In J. C. Quick & L. E. Tetric (Eds.). Handbook of occupational health psychology (pp. 143-162). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. • http://osha.europa.eu/en/topics/whp/index_html/ • http://wellnessproposals.com/wellness-articles/benefits-of-health-promotion-in-the-workplace/ • http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/providers/program/cdpm/pdf/framework_full.pdf

Organizational Health Psychology