Abstract
Occupational health researchers and practitioners have mainly focused on the individual and organizational levels, whereas the team level has been largely neglected. In this study, we define team health climate as employees’ shared perceptions of the extent to which their team is concerned, cares, and communicates about health issues. Based on climate, signaling, and social exchange theories, we examined a multilevel model of team health climate and its relationships with five well-established health-related outcomes (i.e., subjective general health, psychosomatic complaints, mental health, work ability, and presenteeism). Results of multilevel analyses of data provided by 6,449 employees in 621 teams of a large organization showed that team health climate is positively related to subjective general health, mental health, and work ability, and negatively related to presenteeism, above and beyond the effects of team size, age, job tenure, job demands, job control, and employees’ individual perceptions of health climate. Moreover, additional analyses showed that a positive team health climate buffered the negative relationship between employee age and work ability. Implications for future research on team health climate and suggestions for occupational health interventions in teams are discussed.
Highlights
Based on theorizing on organizational climate (Schneider et al, 2013), signaling theory (Connelly et al, 2011), and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), the goal of this study is to examine relationships between team health climate and important health-related outcomes of white-collar workers
Psychological team health climate was very weakly associated with psychosomatic complaints (r = −0.09) and presenteeism (r = −0.08), and weakly associated with subjective general health (r = 0.11), mental health (r = 0.11), work ability (r = 0.15), job demands (r = −0.17), and job control (r = 0.18)
Age was very weakly associated with psychological team health climate (r = −0.05), mental health (r = −0.08), and presenteeism (r = 0.05), weakly associated with psychosomatic complaints (r = 0.10), subjective general health (r = −0.24), and job demands (r = 0.24), moderately associated with work ability (r = −0.30), and strongly associated with job tenure (r = 0.67)
Summary
Based on theorizing on organizational climate (Schneider et al, 2013), signaling theory (Connelly et al, 2011), and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), the goal of this study is to examine relationships between team health climate and important health-related outcomes of white-collar workers. We argue that team health climate is positively related to favorable health-related outcomes because employees are motivated to behave consistent with expectations and common practices in their teams (i.e., team climate; Ehrhart and Naumann, 2004; Schneider et al, 2013). Signaling theory (Ostroff and Bowen, 2000; Connelly et al, 2011) suggests that a positive team health climate signals to employees that their health is valued. Social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Tetrick and Peiró, 2016) proposes that employees are more committed to maintaining and improving their health when they perceive that their health is valued by others
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