Relationships between Occupational Stress, Change in Work Environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms among Non-Healthcare Workers in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study aims to clarify the effect of occupational stress and changes in the work environment on non-healthcare workers’ (HCWs) mental health during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. A web-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted from 16 to 17 December 2020. Data from 807 non-HCWs were included. We evaluated occupational stress using the Generic Job Stress Questionnaire (GJSQ). Depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed using the Japanese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale, respectively. We collected demographic variables, work-related variables, and the variables associated with COVID-19. The adjusted odds ratios for depressive and anxiety groups were estimated using multivariate logistic regression analyses, adjusted for all the demographic variables, work-related variables, COVID-19-related variables, and the six subdivided GJSQ subscales. The results confirm a relationship between variance in workload, job future ambiguity, social support from coworkers, having contact with COVID-19 patients, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Paying attention to job future ambiguity, the variance in workload at the workplace and individual perspectives, promoting contact and support among coworkers using online communication tools, and reducing contact with COVID-19 patients, will be useful for decreasing the depressive and anxiety symptoms among non-HCWs.

Do Attitudes towards Work or Work Motivation Affect Productivity Loss among Academic Employees?

Work motivation and job attitudes are important for productivity levels among academic employees. In situations where employees perceive problems, for example, health-related and work environment-related problems, the ability to perform at work could be affected, which may result in fewer publications, reduced quality and less research funding. Few studies, however, have paid attention to productivity loss among academic employees in order to understand how, or if, the perceived loss is affected by the reported problems, either alone or in combination with work motivation and job attitudes. To evaluate whether attitudes towards work—measured as job satisfaction, organisational commitment and work motivation—are associated with productivity loss in the workplace, a cross-sectional study was conducted. This type of design is required as performance is highly variable and is affected by changes in health and work status. This study includes employees who reported either health-related problems, work environment problems or a combination of both (n = 1475). Linear regression analyses were used to answer the hypotheses. Higher levels of motivation, job satisfaction and organisational commitment were associated with lower levels of productivity loss among employees who experienced either health-related or work environment problems. High work motivation and high commitment were significantly associated with lower levels of productivity loss among employees who experienced a combination of problems. In summary, productivity loss among academic employees is not only affected by health-related problems or problems in the work environment but also by work motivation, job satisfaction and organisational commitment; i.e., these factors seem to buffer, or moderate, the reduction in performance levels for this group of employees.

The Work Environment of Immigrant Employees in Sweden—a Systematic Review

The aim of this systematic review was to summarize and synthesize research results focusing on the work environment of employees with an immigrant background in Sweden. We focus on the main conditions identified in the working environment of immigrant employees and how these conditions may affect their health and well-being. The concept of “minority stress” and the attachment theory are used to understand and interpret the findings. We systematically searched for literature published between the years of 1990 and 2020 in four databases, Web of Science, PubMed, SocIndex, and Academic Search Elite. We started the selection process by reading title and abstracts, then proceeded to read a selection of full-text studies and eliminated those that did not fulfil the inclusion criteria. We did a quality assessment on the full-text studies based on the MMAT-tool, and then performed a narrative synthesis of the results. The results show that immigrants experience several stressors in their work environment, including physical, psychological, and social risks. These risks are, among other things, associated with the nature of the jobs that immigrants are overrepresented in, with minority-related stressors such as discrimination, harassment, and threats on the basis of ethnic background, and with the lack of social support from managers and colleagues. Results also highlight beneficial factors in the immigrants’ working environment and show the importance of a supportive, inclusive, and empowering management. Our main conclusion is that Swedish workplaces need to introduce more active measures to raise awareness of and combat workplace discrimination, work harder to promote inclusion at the workplace, and eliminate physical, psychological, and social health hazards specific to immigrant employees. The leadership and management have an important role to play here, as does the employees’ trade unions and its special functions.

Respective Mediating Effects of Social Position and Work Environment on the Incidence of Common Cardiovascular Risk Factors

Background Social position and work environment are highly interrelated and their respective contribution to cardiovascular risk is still debated. Methods and Results In a cohort of 20 625 French workers followed for 25 years, discrete‐time survival analysis with reciprocal mediating effects, adjusted for sex, age, and parental history of early coronary heart disease, was performed using Bayesian structural equation modeling to simultaneously investigate the extent to which social position mediates the effect of work environment and, inversely, the extent to which work environment mediates the effect of social position on the incidence of common cardiovascular risk factors. Depending on the factor, social position mediates 2% to 53% of the effect of work environment and work environment mediates 9% to 87% of the effect of social position. The mediation by work environment is larger than that by social position for the incidence of obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, sleep complaints, and depression (mediation ratios 1.32–41.5, 6.67 when modeling the 6 factors together). In contrast, the mediation by social position is larger than that by work environment for the incidence of nonmoderate alcohol consumption, smoking, and leisure‐time physical inactivity (mediation ratios 0.16–0.69, 0.26 when modeling the 3 factors together). Conclusions The incidence of behavioral risk factors seems strongly dependent on social position whereas that of clinical risk factors seems closely related to work environment, suggesting that preventive strategies should be based on education and general practice for the former and on work organization and occupational medicine for the latter.

Relationship Building as a Strategy for Managing Referring Clinicians

The strength of a radiology practice depends on the strong relationships radiologists develop with referring clinicians. Solid relationships with referring clinicians can contribute to a satisfying work environment, and ultimately excellent patient care. There are several different ways that a radiologist can help improve relationships with clinicians. As a start, this includes a radiologist strengthening one’s emotional intelligence. Also, identifying the personality traits of others is key to successful interactions. Conflicts in the workplace are inevitable, and effective negotiation is helpful in building relationships with clinicians. Interacting with the referring clinicians is also key to a successful relationship. This includes all in-person communication, participating in tumor boards, community outreach events, and social functions outside of work. This article presents several tips to improve and manage relationships with referring clinicians.

PENGARUH LINGKUNGAN KERJA, MOTIVASI, KOMPENSASI TERHADAP KINERJA KARYAWAN MELALUI JOB SATISFACTION PADA KARYAWAN PT BPR BKK TAMAN PERSERODA PEMALANG

This research was carried out to determine the effect of work environment, motivastion and compensation on performance through job satisfaction as an intervening variable PT BPR BKK TAMAN Perseroda, This study used porposive sampling technique where the selected sample was 50 respondents who were employees of PT BPR BKK TAMAN Perseroda, a financial services provider company, the date were analyzed throught Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), method and SMARTPLS 3 dfe to the small number of targeted respondent from result of the study, it was found that the environment, motivation, and compensation had a significant effect on job satisfaction and employee performance, beside job satisfaction had a significant effect on performance moreover the intervening varable namely job satisfaction could partially moderate exogenous variable Keyword: work environment, work motivation, compensation, performance, job satisfaction

Distributed Authentication Model for Secure Network Connectivity in Network Separation Technology

Considering the increasing scale and severity of damage from recent cybersecurity incidents, the need for fundamental solutions to external security threats has increased. Hence, network separation technology has been designed to stop the leakage of information by separating business computing networks from the Internet. However, security accidents have been continuously occurring, owing to the degradation of data transmission latency performance between the networks, decreasing the convenience and usability of the work environment. In a conventional centralized network connection concept, a problem occurs because if either usability or security is strengthened, the other is weakened. In this study, we proposed a distributed authentication mechanism for secure network connectivity (DAM4SNC) technology in a distributed network environment that requires security and latency performance simultaneously to overcome the trade-off limitations of existing technology. By communicating with separated networks based on the authentication between distributed nodes, the inefficiency of conventional centralized network connection solutions is overcome. Moreover, the security is enhanced through periodic authentication of the distributed nodes and differentiation of the certification levels. As a result of the experiment, the relative efficiency of the proposed scheme (REP) was about 420% or more in all cases.