Stress and Quality of Working Life


Book Description

It is an unfortunate reality that many employees experience elevated levels of stress at work. Feeling stressed has impacts beyond mere emotions. For example, a survey of European Union member states found that 28% of employees reported stress?related illness or health issues, and studies in the USA have found that over 25% of employees reported that they are often or very often burned out by their work. Also, not all stress should be or can be eliminated, as many industries and jobs are highly demanding in their nature. Therefore, it is important that employees, employers, clinicians, and researchers endeavor to develop a better understanding of workplace stressors and how employee health and well?being can be improved. This book can help individuals and organizations better appreciate stressors faced by employees. It showcases research by over two dozen authors in twelve chapters, focusing on the interpersonal and occupation?based sources of workplace stress, as well as how to alleviate work stress. Coworkers, supervisors, and others with whom a person works can have a dramatic influence on the degree of stress a worker experiences, and it is often the interpersonal conflict that is unrelated to one’s job that is the most difficult to manage. In addition, the context of a person’s work also influences the degree and type of stressors they encounter at work, and this book examines several occupations and their associated stress. We hope that these findings provide ways for individuals and organizations to enhance the well?being of employees.




Occupational Safety and Hygiene II


Book Description

Occupational Safety and Hygiene II contains selected papers from the International Symposium on Occupational Safety and Hygiene (SHO2014, Guimar Portugal, 13-14 February 2014), which was organized by the Portuguese Society for Occupational Safety and Hygiene (SPOSHO). The contributions focus on selected topics, which include (but is not limited t




Handbook of Stress and Academic Anxiety


Book Description

This handbook presents an overview of research on test anxiety and related forms of students’ stress and anxiety at schools and other academic environments, and also brings together a series of psychological interventions to prevent and treat anxiety disorders related to academic assessments. Its aim is to inform about strategies that help promote more adaptive behaviors towards academic assessment, as well as discuss other variables (e.g., bullying) that influence test anxiety, a typical stressor at the school and academic environment. These stressors can impair the students’ socio-cognitive development, impairing their ability to study and posing a risk to their mental health. The volume is organized in three parts. The first part brings together chapters discussing different variables and processes associated with academic anxiety, such as test anxiety and social influence, academic motivation, bullying, and procrastination. The second part is completely dedicated to psychological interventions with students designed to promote adaptive coping strategies to deal with academic anxiety and to prevent the development of psychopathologies associated with it. These interventions are based on different approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, analytic behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and mindfulness, among others. Finally, the third part presents strategies that teachers can adopt to manage academic anxiety. The Handbook of Stress and Academic Anxiety: Psychological Processes and Interventions with Students and Teachers will be a valuable resource for school and clinical psychologists, teachers, school managers and policy makers by providing information based on the best scientific evidences to help students cope with academic anxiety, prevent the development of psychopathologies associated with it and promote mental health at schools and other academic environments.




Improving Employee Health and Well Being


Book Description

It is widely recognized that healthy employees are happier and more productive at work. Experiencing stress at work decreases employee’s health and affects their well-being. The American Institute of Stress (AIS) estimated that US$ 300 billion/year are spent on conditions related elevated stress levels. Stress is an everyday part of life for most people in any society. However, when people experience too much stress, serious psychological and physical health problems can result. This book provides an in-depth examination of how to improve employee health and well-being. It features the research, knowledge, and experience presented by over two dozen stress scholars who author twelve chapters. Not all stress can be prevented, and many jobs are highly demanding in multiple ways. Thus, if you cannot prevent stress, effort should be put into understanding occupational stressors and improving employee health. This book on employee health and well-being is aimed at assisting occupational health professionals and academics find ways to help employees managing stress and improve their health. But, it also can be helpful for employees to learn to how they can improve their occupational health. The research findings and knowledge offered by these well-respected leaders in stress scholarship give both employers and employees an awareness of the implications of workplace stress on employee health, and provides avenues for both organizations and individuals to improve worker well-being.




Sustainable Consumption


Book Description

This book provides a broad understanding of whether law plays a role in influencing patterns of sustainable consumption and, if so, how. Bringing together legal scholars from the Global South and the Global North, it examines these questions in the context of national, transnational and international law, within single and plural legal systems, and across a range of sector-specific issue areas. The chapters identify how traditional legal disciplines (e.g. constitutional law, consumer law, public procurement, international public law), sector-related regulation (e.g. energy, water, waste), and legal rules in specific areas (e.g. eco-labelling and packing) engage with the concept of sustainable consumption. A number of the contributions describe this relationship by isolating a national legal system, while others approach it from the vantage point of legal pluralism, exploring the conflicts and convergences of rules between multiple international treaties (or guidelines) and those between the rules of international and transnational law (or both) vis-à-vis national legal systems. While sustainable consumption is recognised as an important field of interdisciplinary research linking virtually all social science disciplines, legal scholarship, in contrast, has neglected the importance of the field of sustainable consumption to the law. This book fills the gap.




Wellbeing for Sustainability in the Global Workplace


Book Description

Wellbeing in the workplace is an essential element in fostering a worker’s sense of being valued, ensuring their engagement, and ultimately leading to higher levels of productivity and organizational performance. This important book specifically adds to the discussion by taking a global perspective, and evaluates wellbeing in the workplace in different countries, identifying both universal issues and specific cultural issues. Chapter authors have been drawn from across five continents and eleven countries to provide ground-breaking research in wellbeing from different regional perspectives, looking at both developed and developing world scenarios. What is clear throughout the book is that organizations that are not people-centered undermine their capacity to attain and maintain quality standards, high performance, and competitiveness. Organizational concerns about workers' wellbeing are growing exponentially due to the global VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. In this environment, organizational success is no longer simply based on short-term revenue maximization, capital investments, or sales, but increasingly depends on people’s wellbeing, human capital, and the development of human talent to ensure sustained and sustainable growth and performance. This book presents a collection of studies that address current and forthcoming organizational challenges and offer realistic solutions to support leaders and managers seeking to balance and value the contribution of people with long-term organizational performance.




Understanding Burnout Recovery Among Native-Born Korean Missionaries


Book Description

In this timely book, Cho provides mission scholars, sending churches, and mission agencies with an understanding of Korean missionaries' burnout recovery process. Her study of Korean missionary burnout recovery included thirty-nine research participants who had experienced burnout in missionary service and who subsequently recovered. Participants reported a variety of physical, emotional, and spiritual symptoms, as well as relational difficulties experienced during burnout. Cho describes how their self-help approach, characterized by independent, religious self-effort, brought only temporary relief. Through self-care, however, they experienced genuine recovery. Self-care that leads to lasting recovery is holistic and grace-based, characterized by a correct understanding of the roles of God and others in their lives and engagement in authentic community for interdependent care. This study also gives insightful recommendations to missionary member care systems, mission agencies, and other sending organizations in an Asian cultural context about how to care for Korean missionaries. It is also intended for counselors of home churches so that they can provide better member care for burned-out missionaries. Lastly, this study advances research into contextually appropriate paradigms and strategies helpful to cross-cultural missionaries in the area of both Korean missionaries and non-Western studies in missionary member care.




From Slavery to Citizenship


Book Description

Citizenship is not a spectator sport; it is all about engagement. From Slavery to Citizenship is part of a bigger picture - a development process which will enable us to gain more control over our own lives and to participate in decisions about the future direction of society and the organisations we are involved in. This book is unusual in suggesting that slavery is not a remote historical phenomenon, but a fundamental component of our present. People have been slaves in the past and some people are enslaved today. The subject of slavery is highly charged with emotion. From Slavery to Citizenship seeks to facilitate dialogue and to bridge gaps. This is not easy as people have been speaking different languages and working from diverse sets of assumptions. A first step is to listen and to learn from differences. In this book, a single author's voice brings together contributions from major public figures and respected thinkers. Within a rich tapestry of perspectives, there is no single line of argument, or one overall conclusion. There are contributions from Africa, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and Asia, and from discourses in work organisation, occupational health, psychiatry and human rights, as well as education. After reading the book, you are unlikely to conclude that all of the contributors have agreed, but you will find that they give you a starting point from which to reflect and begin discussion, as well as the tools to engage in active citizenship.







Quality of Life and Quality of Working Life


Book Description

In this book, we can read about the well-being, quality of life, and quality of working life. The authors come from different countries, and their ideas, studies, findings, and experiences offer beneficial contributions to enhance our knowledge in the field of well-being and quality of life, as well as quality of working life. The book is divided into two sections, and their respective chapters refer to two major areas. The first section covers "Different Perspectives of Quality of Life," considering the antecedents of happiness, quality of life and sports, quality of life indexes for the United States, well-being in the context of family policies in European countries, cultural well-being and income in Italy, and the right to life in South Africa. The second section deals with "Well-Being and Quality of Working Life," emphasizing these topics for university professors in Brazil, as well as work-related well-being, psychological well-being of individuals as employees, physical and psychical well-being and stress, human work in organizations considering the discomfort perspective, and professional pride and dignity among social workers. Thus, we consider this book will be of interest for readers with a diverse group of audience in different areas of specialty such as psychology, industrial and social psychology, management, medicine, education, law, and sociology.