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Summary Work & Health Psychology (761004-B-6)
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Summary of the course work and health psychology.
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Lecture 1: IntroductionJobs can have good and bad reputations, influenced by factors like payments, social
status, and involvement.
What is ‘work’?
‘A set of coordinated and goal-directed activities that are conducted in exchange for
something else, usually some form of monetary reward’
Example: Waiter/Waitress
- Coordinated?
● Certain tables that you have to serve/certain procedures
- Goal-directed?
● Serve customers/make sure the customer has a nice experience
- In exchange for something else?
● Salary, social contact, personal satisfaction
What is work psychology?
Psychology: individual level, people’s behavior, motivation, thoughts, and emotions.
Work psychology: Use insights from psychology to help workers achieve their work goals
in an optimal manner, and to help organizations achieve their goals. Not only help the
organization by making e.g. more profit but also help the employees, which can, in turn,
lead to higher productivity.
Balance approach!
Belief: engaged employees = productivity
How to design work so that it is motivating, and enjoyable, offers learning opportunities to
employees, does not induce stress, and allows the employees to work in a productive
way?
Example: Waiter/Waitress
- Organizational goals: good service performance, high customer satisfaction, & high
profits. Sustainability?
- When do waiters/waitresses show the desired behaviors for good service
performance?
● positive mood/ feeling well?
● (not) under pressure? – optional demands
● motivation?
,Why is work psychology important?
1. Because of the amount of time we spend working
- Most people spend 35% of 24 hours on work or work-related activities
2. Because work has the potential to make us happy
- A sense of belonging and identity
3. Because work has the potential to make us sick
- If the job is poorly designed (high demand low resource) it can lead to burnout
4. Because of the increasing expectations of employers
- Challenge yourself, develop yourself, have higher expectations, be open to
feedback, be competitive, and be self-sufficient
The roots of work psychology
It started more than 150 years ago when we moved from the pre-industrial time to the
industrial revolution.
Psychotechnics/Applied psychology
Psychotechnics = The practical or technological application of psychology, as in
the analysis of social or economic problems. Mainly in Europe.
Pioneers:
- Jean Marie Lahy (France, from 1903 onwards)
● experiments on the selection of streetcar operators (sort of tram)
● comparing good and bad workers to distinguish characteristics
● a general method for employee selection (normed tests)
- Münsterberg (Germany/U.S., 1913)
● “selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially
fit for a particular kind of economic work.” (Münsterberg, 1913)
● Work on the selection of drivers, typists, army gunners, etc.
Scientific management
Country of origin: USA. Founding father: Frederick Winslow Taylor.
“As to the importance of obtaining the maximum output of each man and each machine, it
is only through the adoption of modern scientific management that this great problem can
be finally solved” (Taylor, 1911)
- Not focusing on the match between worker and tasks, but mostly on the task
Focus on the task (simplification of tasks for the employee). Why? Two assumptions about
the workers (outdated assumptions):
First assumption of Taylor approach > Workers are lazy
“…in nineteen out of twenty industrial establishments, the workmen believe it to be
directed against their interests to give their employers the best initiative, and that instead
of working hard to do the largest possible amount of work and the best quality of work for
their employer, they deliberately work as slowly as they dare while they at the same time
try to make those over them believe that they are working fast.” (Taylor, 1939).
, Second assumption of Taylor approach > Workers are stupid
Pig iron handling (Raw iron bar). Task: loading or piling pig iron to different places in the
factory (~46kg). “there is a science of handling pig iron, and this science amounts to so
much that the man who is suited to handle pig iron cannot possibly understand it, nor even
work in accordance with the laws of this science, without the help of those who are over
him” (Taylor, 1911)
Negative view of the employee!
Scientific management: Solution
To maximize productivity
- Simplify tasks as much as possible
- Examine the best way to conduct the tasks
- Training workers in the best way to conduct the tasks (High control)
- Separating the planning of tasks from their execution
- Selecting workers for particular tasks (E.g., greedy worker)
1930 - now
Employees had no autonomy. Employees were unhappy and wanted change.
Human Relations Movement
Started with the Hawthorne studies (1924-1932).
“From the time of the publication of the results of the Hawthorne Studies onward, no one
interested in the behavior of employees could consider them as isolated individuals.
Rather, such factors and concepts as group influences, social status, informal
communication, roles, norms, and the like were drawn upon to explain and interpret the
voluminous data from these studies and other field investigations that followed them”.
Much of this focuses on employee productivity, but not much on employee wellbeing.
Contemporary work psychology
Well-being
“The state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy” (Oxford Dictionaries)
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO)
Well-being at work
Three dimensions:
Health (physical well-being)
- decrease disease and injuries, stress, and increase health benefits
Relationships (social well-being)
- increase trust, and support, decrease exploitation, and power abuse
Happiness (psychological well-being)
- increase pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment/engagement, and decrease the
opposite thereof
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