Psychosocial Safety Climate as a Multilevel Extension of ERI Theory: Evidence from Australia

Abstract

Several models and theories have been proposed to understand the development of work-related stress and consequent psychological injuries. For example, in terms of cause, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) model explores the imbalance between workers’ efforts and rewards, and Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) theory explores the priority senior management gives to workers’ psychological health and safety vs. productivity imperatives. To understand the threat to Australian workers’ psychological health and productivity, we extend the Effort-Reward Imbalance model (ERI) in a multilevel way to incorporate PSC theory. Using the Australian Workplace Barometer (AWB) surveillance tool we sampled 850 employees within 119 organisations. As expected, we found that both high organisational PSC and individual perceptions of PSC, reduced workers’ ERI. At the individual level PSC triggered the ERI process by indirectly affecting workers’ physical and psychological health, as well as motivational outcomes, via workers’ perceptions of ERI. Our research also included a multi-level approach to the newly extended ERI model incorporating PSC. At the organisational level, we found that PSC had a positive indirect impact upon workers’ job satisfaction, via organisational rewards and organisational ERI, and negative indirect impact upon workers’ physical and psychological health, via organisational demands. Our research demonstrates that the PSC extended ERI model can be applied within the Australian population to understand health and organisational outcomes, and that multi-level approach is required to understand the complex issue of work-related stress.