Overview
Employee wellbeing focuses on a range of issues affecting employees and their psychological and physical health and wellbeing at work.
As organisations respond to the demands of increased global competition and productivity pressures, this has changed how work is managed. Such pressures have led to increased casual work arrangements, as well as affected job quality and job security, which can lead to employee stress, burnout and other negative impacts. Such pressures can decrease workplace productivity and adversely affect employees’ mental and physical health and their individual and family relationships.
Organisations must focus on preventing these negative outcomes and assist workers through the provision of policies and programs to achieve a better balance between employment and non-employment-related demands. For example, family-friendly policies can reduce stress on families that juggle work and childcare arrangements. Organisations need to be strategic in developing organisation-wide approaches to reduce workplace pressures and enable employees to have a say about the management of work and wellbeing practices.
Research has shown that organisations that support employee wellbeing find these policies positively impact productivity and can have benefits for attracting and retaining skilled talent.
Research areas
- Resilience at work
- Employee wellbeing
- Identity at work
- Interpersonal communication
- Learning and training processes
- Organisational psychology
- Occupational stress, bullying and coping
- Occupational values
- Organisational behaviour
- Personality
- Psychological health of high-risk workers (such as emergency service workers, correctional workers)
- Work intensification and labour adjustment
- Work-life balance
Wellbeing at Work
Professor Paula Brough explains how employee wellbeing benefits the employment relationship.
Members undertaking research in this area
- Professor David Peetz
- Dr Mary Rogers
- Associate Professor Keith Townsend
- Associate Professor Ashlea Troth
- Professor Adrian Wilkinson
- Professor Catherine Cassell (Adjunct)
RECENT PROJECTS
- Advancing Occupational Stress Research: A Comprehensive Trial of the Health Workplaces Program
- Corporate Ownership and Global Wellbeing: Some Implications for Sustainability
- Employee–Employer Relations and Workplace Challenges in the US, Australia and UK
- Employee Voice in Australia: the Impact of Employee Participation Arrangements and Organisational Performance and Employee Wellbeing
- Improving People Management Systems in Emergency Services
- The Relationship Between Working Arrangements and Wellbeing in Regional Coal–Mining Communities
- ‘Who Wants to be a Teacher?’ Supporting the Transition, Wellbeing and Retention of New Teachers
Recent research outputs
- Biggs, A., Brough, P. and Barbour, J.P. 2014, ‘Exposure to extraorganizational stressors: The impact on mental health and organizational perceptions for police officers’, International Journal of Stress Management, 21(3), pp. 255–282.
- O’Donohue, W., Martin, A., Torugsa, N. 2015, ‘Understanding individual responses to failure by the organisation to fulfil its obligations: examining the influence of psychological capital and psychological contract type’, Human Resource Management Journal, 25(1), pp. 131–147.
- Peetz, D. & Murray, G. 2011, ‘You get really old quick: involuntary long hours in the mining industry’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(1), pp. 13-30.
- Ramsay, S., Troth, A. & Branch, S. 2011, ‘Workplace bullying through the lens of social psychology: A group level analysis’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 84, pp. 799-816.
- Roesler, M.L., Glendon, A.I., & O’Callaghan, F.V. 2013, ‘Recovering from traumatic occupational hand injury following surgery: A biopsychosocial perspective’, Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 23(4), pp.536–546.
- Rogers, M.E., Creed, P.A., Searle, J. & Nicholls, S.L., 2015, ‘Coping with medical training demands: Thinking of dropping out, or in it for the long haul’, Studies in Higher Education, 41(9), 1715-1732.
Rogers, M.E., Creed, P.A. & Searle, J. 2014, ‘Emotional labour, training stress, burnout, and depressive symptoms in junior doctors’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 66, pp. 232-248. - Timms, C. & Brough, P. 2013, ‘“I like being a teacher”: Career satisfaction, the work environment and psychological health’, Journal of Educational Administration, 51(6), pp. 768–789.
- Torugsa, N., O’Donohue, W. & Hecker, R. 2013, ‘Proactive Corporate Social Responsibility: Understanding the role of its economic, social and environmental dimensions on the association between capabilities and performance’, Journal of Business Ethics, 115(2), pp. 383-402.