What Makes Workers Sick?

What makes workers sick? Or, more important, what makes workers feel like they are sick? A recent study from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) points to certain psychological factors when employees rated their own health.

There are certain work factors that are perceived by workers as having a negative effect on their health and well-being.

NIOSH researchers analyzed data from 10,767 adults employed across many occupations who participated in the 2010 National Health Interview Survey. Respondents were asked open-ended questions about their employment status and features of their job. The study considered five categories of job characteristics:

• Occupation;
• Type of pay and job benefits;
• Work organization;
• Chemical/environmental hazards; and
• Workplace psychosocial factors, including job insecurity, a hostile work environment, and work/life imbalance.

Are You Making HR Sick?

The key finding of the study is that workers in the business operations profession (e.g., Marketing or Human Resources professionals) were 85% more likely to report fair or poor health compared with workers in all other occupations.

Does No Paid Sick Leave Make You Sick?

The study seems to indicate that folks without paid sick leave feel sicker than those with that benefit. Findings include that workers with no paid sick leave were 35% more likely to report fair or poor health.

There is no federal law requiring private employers to provide employees with paid sick leave, although federal contractors and their subcontractors are required to provide paid sick leave to their employees performing work covered in contracts with the federal government.

A growing number of states and municipalities are legislating paid sick leave laws applicable to employers that do business within state or municipal jurisdictions.

Currently, seven states and the District of Columbia have leave laws that have been enacted for the entire state:

• Arizona
• California (a number of cities also have their own leave laws)
• Connecticut
• Massachusetts
• Oregon
• Vermont
• Washington (four cities have their own leave laws)

Other states have leave laws that have been enacted in specific counties or cities:

• Illinois
• Maryland
• Minnesota
• New Jersey
• New York
• Pennsylvania

Bullying Makes a Lot of Folks Sick

Other findings of the NIOSH study include:

• Workers who were worried about becoming unemployed were 43% more likely to report fair or poor health;
• Workers who reported difficulty combining work and family were 23% more likely to report fair or poor health; and
• Workers who reported being bullied at work were 82% more likely to report fair or poor health.

An earlier NIOSH study showed that most incidents of bullying in the workplace appear to be perpetuated by employees against one another. Suggestions from that study include that efforts to make changes at the organizational level to prevent bullying in the workplace should include steps to improve relationships among coworkers and should not strictly focus on improving supervisor/employee and customer/employee relationships, the researchers said in reporting the preliminary results.

NIOSH also contends that bullying can be very costly for a company. Studies of bullying have shown that being on the receiving end of such behaviors results in damaging effects in worker health and well-being. In terms of cost to the organization, bullying has been associated with absenteeism, higher turnover rate, reduced productivity, and litigation costs.