Economic Stress at Work: Its Impact over Absenteeism and Innovation.

Martin Sanchez-Gomez,Nicola Mucci,Georgia Libera Finstad,Antonio Ariza-Montes,Giulio Arcangeli,Federico Alessio,Gabriele Giorgi

doi:10.3390/ijerph18105265

Abstract

Economic stress has been recognized as a major threat to the well-being and performance of workers, especially during times of global economic crisis. An interesting and relatively unexplored research topic concerns the associations between economic stress and employee job outcomes such as innovative behaviors, indispensable for business survival. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between economic stress, absenteeism and innovation. We considered both a direct and a mediation hypothesis and hypothesized that economic stress can have a negative influence on innovation directly and indirectly through increased absenteeism. A cross-sectional study was performed during 2018 and 2019 in an Italian food factory. A sample of 578 employees completed the Stress Questionnaire, the Janssen’s nine-item scale and a single-item regarding absenteeism. All relationships are supported by empirical data. As expected, the results indicated that economic stress is negatively related to innovation and positively related to absenteeism, which, in turn, plays a mediating role in the relationship between economic stress and innovative behavior. Herewith, those employees with higher levels of economic stress show higher levels of absenteeism contributing at the same time to a decrease in innovative behaviors. These findings show the importance of economic stress in understanding individual work outcomes and highlight the need to promote adequate intervention programs.

Highlights

The findings described above show how the economic crisis can lead to detrimental consequences for employees
The purpose of the innovative framework of this study is to explore the relationships between economic stress, absenteeism and innovation, contributing to the existing literature
This work investigates the relationship between economic stress, absenteeism and innovation

Summary

Introduction

The psychological health and well-being of workers can be affected by several emerging and re-emerging occupational risks, especially during a financially unfavorable period of global crisis. Some researchers demonstrated that the economic crisis negatively affects workers’ psychological well-being through negative outcomes such as fear of non-employability, fear of the crisis, job insecurity and job loss [1,2]. In this regard, Probst and colleagues [3] Economic stress can have a major impact on workers’ health, and as early as 1967, Pierce’s [4] longitudinal study had discovered a relationship between

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