Physical Workplace Environment Research Articles

The Influence of Physical Workplace Environment (PWE) for A Healthy Culture of Employees

The paper reviews the influence of the physical workplace environment (PWE) on the organisational culture of employees that can affect the employees’ performance, well-being, satisfaction, engagement, and creativity. It emphasises that the physical environment can reflect and shape the organisational culture, which is the shared values, beliefs, and norms that influence how employees interact and work. A healthy workplace environment of an organisation will influence the innovation and collaboration between employees, decrease absenteeism and increase the performance of employees. The paper employs analytical reviews of the related articles to justify the influences of the physical workplace environment on employees’ well-being in the organisational culture. The content analysis is used to analyse the literature framework of the article. The findings revealed the significance of the physical workplace environment on employees who are well-equipped with positive environment support, who will be highly satisfied and show a high level of commitment towards the organisation. It is essential to design a physical workplace environment aligned with the organisational culture and supporting the employee's needs and preferences. A well-designed physical workplace environment can enhance the organisation’s communication, collaboration, innovation, and productivity and influence the employees’ attitudes, behaviours, and outcomes

The Effect of Excessive Use of Force on the Mental, Physical, and Social Health and Workplace Environment of Medical Professionals

The Effect of Excessive Use of Force on the Mental, Physical, and Social Health and Workplace Environment of Medical Professionals

The Impacts of Physical Workplace Environment (PWE) on Employees Productivity

The paper reviews the impacts of the physical workplace environment (PWE) on employees' productivity, focusing on the pivotal role of the physical environment and its implications for employee well-being. The study emphasises that the physical environment is a critical factor influencing the activities of employees concerning global issues, thereby impacting productivity, efficiency, satisfaction, and absenteeism. The paper employs analytical reviews of the related articles to justify the impact of the physical workplace environment (PWE) on employees' productivity. The content analysis is used to analyse the literature framework of the article. The findings revealed the significance of the physical environment within the workplace, elucidating its profound influence on employee well-being, productivity, and satisfaction. The findings highlight the substantial role of employers in shaping the physical workplace environment and its reflecting impact on employee focus and productivity. A well-designed, comfortable, and conducive workplace has a positive influence on employee satisfaction, recognising employees as a vital asset in achieving organisational success. Consequently, creating an excellent physical workplace environment can significantly enhance employee productivity, encouraging employers to prioritise and provide such an environment, thus contributing to sustainable environmental health and fostering safe workplace practices.

SPINE20 recommendations 2022: spine care-working together to recover stronger.

Globally, spine disorders are the leading cause of disability, affecting more than half a billion individuals. However, less than 50% of G20 countries specifically identify spine health within their public policy priorities. Therefore, it is crucial to raise awareness among policy makers of the disabling effect of spine disorders and their impact on the economic welfare of G20 nations. In 2019, SPINE20 was established as the leading advocacy group to bring global attention to spine disorders. Recommendations were developed through two Delphi methods with international and multi-professional panels. In 2022, seven recommendations were delivered to the leaders of G20 countries, urging them to: Develop action plans to provide universal access to evidence-based spine care that incorporates the needs of minorities and vulnerable populations. Invest in the development of sustainable human resource capacity, through multisectoral and inter-professional competency-based education and training to promote evidence-based approaches to spine care, and to build an appropriate healthcare working environment that optimizes the delivery of safe health services. Develop policies using the best available evidence to properly manage spine disorders and to prolong functional healthy life expectancy in the era of an aging population. Create a competent workforce and improve the healthcare infrastructure/facilities including equipment to provide evidence-based inter-professional rehabilitation services to patients with spinal cord injury throughout their continuum of care. Build collaborative and innovative translational research capacity within national, regional, and global healthcare systems for state-of-the-art and cost-effective spine care across the healthcare continuum ensuring equality, diversity, and inclusion of all stakeholders. Develop international consensus statements on patient outcomes and how they can be used to define and develop pathways for value-based care. Recognize that intervening on determinants of health including physical activity, nutrition, physical and psychosocial workplace environment, and smoking-free lifestyle can reduce the burden of spine disabilities and improve the health status and wellness of the population. At the third SPINE20 summit 2022 which took place in Bali, Indonesia, in August 2022, 17 associations endorsed its recommendations. SPINE20 advocacy efforts focus on developing public policy recommendations to improve the health, welfare, and wellness of all who suffer from spinal pain and disability. We propose that focusing on facilitating access to systems that prioritize value-based care delivered by a competent healthcare workforce will reduce disability and improve the productivity of the G20 nations.

Association of work environment with stress and depression among Japanese workers.

There is a lack of studies that investigated the effect of a wide range of work environmental factors on stress and depression in Japan. To examine the association of work environment factors with stress and depression among workers in Japan. We conducted questionnaire surveys of workers that mainly engage in desk work in Japan. Stress was assessed through the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), depression through the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and work environment through physical and psychological workplace environment questionnaires. Workers were divided into low and high stress groups based on PSS score (median split), and divided into non-depressed and depressed groups based on their PHQ-9 score (< 5, and ≥5); these groups were then compared with their working environment. In addition, a multiple regression analysis was performed. Responses were obtained from 210 subjects. Multiple regression analysis showed that "Ability to work at one's own pace" and "Ability to apply personal viewpoint to work," etc., had effect on stress, while "Workplace harassment" and "Support from colleagues," etc., had effect on depression. The results suggest that stress and depression in Japanese workers are related to factors such as job demands, control of work, workplace harassment, and psychological safety.

Assessing Employee Engagement in a Post-COVID-19 Workplace Ecosystem

This article has aimed to better understand employee engagement in a post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem. We identified a knowledge gap in the relationship between employee engagement and the physical workplace environment through an interdisciplinary literature review. We subsequently tested this gap by comparing employee engagement metrics proposed by leading academics in the field of organisational psychology with a sample of commonly used real estate industry approaches to monitoring workplace design/management. We focused specifically on industry-projected post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem scenarios, and the results suggest that traditional employee engagement metrics and industry approaches to monitoring workplace design and management do not fully reflect the recent shift to hybrid work patterns. We shed light on the implications that this can have on our existing knowledge of “sustainable” property markets in a wider city context.

Associations Of The Physical Workplace Environment With Sedentary Behaviour At Work

Associations Of The Physical Workplace Environment With Sedentary Behaviour At Work

Occupational, health and safety situation at small and medium enterprises in Kosovo, contextual factors, barriers, drivers and intervention process

AbstractThis survey has been performed as part of a wider survey within the Western Balkan Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) Competitiveness Support Project. It presents the current situation of occupational health and safety (OHS) management at 18 SMEs in Kosovo. SMEs in the Republic of Kosovo are facing many difficulties in identifying the real need for interventions, recruiting adequate professional staff to support their activities in OHS. Exposed to an opened market under the regional and international competition, their sustainability has become more difficult and their financial fragility leads very often to the ignorance of OHS issues within their organization.The first objective of this research aimed to understand the OHS contextual factors, barriers and drivers based on the current practice of SMEs in Kosovo. The second objective was to find out if the OHS “ideal intervention process” is applicable to achieve improvements for SMEs in Kosovo. Data collection was expedited through internal documents review, site visits and questionnaires. The statistical data were subject to descriptive analyses and inferential statistics. The findings showed that the contextual factors which influence the intervention process, were of participatory nature, cognitive and physical workplace environment, while the perceived barriers were mainly coming from lack of resources and information. Finally the features of OHS “ideal intervention process” were analyzed and compared for applicability to the SMEs in Kosovo and several interventions in this regards were proposed.

Implementing remote triage in large health systems: A qualitative evidence synthesis.

Remote triage (RT) allows interprofessional teams (e.g., nurses and physicians) to assess patients and make clinical decisions remotely. RT use has developed widespread interest due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has future potential to address the needs of a rapidly aging population, improve access to care, facilitate interprofessional team care, and ensure appropriate use of resources. However, despite rapid and increasing interest in implementation of RT, there is little research concerning practices for successful implementation. We conducted a systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis of practices that impact the implementation of RT for adults seeking clinical care advice. We searched MEDLINE®, EMBASE, and CINAHL from inception through July 2018. We included 32 studies in this review. Our review identified four themes impacting the implementation of RT: characteristics of staff who use RT, influence of RT on staff, considerations in selecting RT tools, and environmental and contextual factors impacting RT. The findings of our systemic review underscore the need for a careful consideration of (a) organizational and stakeholder buy-in before launch, (b) physical and psychological workplace environment, (c) staff training and ongoing support, and (d) optimal metrics to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of implementation. Our findings indicate that preimplementation planning, as well as evaluating RT by collecting data during and after implementation, is essential to ensuring successful implementation and continued adoption of RT in a health care system.

The social and physical workplace environment and commute mode: A natural experimental study.

Despite strong evidence for health benefits from active travel, levels remain low in many countries. Changes to the physical and social workplace environment might encourage active travel but evaluation has been limited.We explored associations between changes in the physical and social workplace environment and changes in commute mode over one year among 419 participants in the Commuting and Health in Cambridge study.In adjusted analyses, an increase in the presence of one physical characteristic (e.g. bicycle parking or shower facilities) was associated with a 3.3% (95% confidence interval 1.0–5.6) reduction in the proportion of commutes by private motor vehicle and a 4.4% (95% CI 1.2–7.7) increase in the proportion of trips including active modes among men. These associations were not seen in women.A change to a more favourable social environment for walking or cycling among workplace management was associated with an increased proportion of commutes including active modes in women (4.5%, 95% CI 1.4–7.5) but not men. However, in both genders a change to more a favourable social environment for cycling among colleagues was associated with a reduced proportion of commutes by exclusively active modes (−2.8%, 95% CI −5.0 to −0.6).This study provides longitudinal evidence for gender differences in the associations between workplace environment and commute mode. A more supportive physical environment was associated with more active commuting in men, while the social environment appeared to have more complex associations that were stronger among women.

Effect of Ergonomic Factors on Employees Performance in Nigeria’s Banking Sector

The study examined the effect of ergonomic factors on employees’ performance in the Nigerian banking sector, using banks in Anambra State, Nigeria as the study area. In investigating the effects of these factors on employees’ performance, we raised a literature review and partitioned it into three main sections of conceptual review, theoretical exposition and empirical review. The study adopted descriptive survey design and the main statistical tool of analysis were Summary Statistics and Chi-Square (c 2 ) test of independence. All tests were conducted at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings from the study were that physical workplace environment significantly affects employees’ performance in the banking sector in Nigeria. Similarly, the study found also that engaging on repetitive task assignment and insufficient rest time hampers employees’ performance. The study concludes that having work/task design that are repetitive makes employees feel tired and bored and that insufficient rest time for the employees also leads to health conditions that negatively affects performance in the banking industry in Nigeria. It was recommended among others that the management should encourage the employees to perform better by providing conducive workplace environment both in design of tasks and indoor office environment. Keywords: Ergonomic factors, Employees’ performance, Banking sector, Nigeria. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-23-10 Publication date: August 31 st 2020

Employee’s productivity at the operation of indonesian railway

This research was designed to study the effect of physical workplace environment and non physical workplace environment towards employee’s productivity. This work was conducted at the Indonesian Railway Corp. operation district 8. The population of this research was 250 employees and the sample was determined using slovin’s equation with the size 71 employees. The data was taken using questionare. The linear regression analysis was employed to analyze the partial and simultan effect of effect of physical workplace environment and non physical workplace environment towards employee’s productivity. According to the statistical analysis conducted using SPSS 18, the p-Value of variable physical workplace environment and non physical workplace environment was 0.013 and 0.036 respectively, both were less than 0.05, then it can be concluded that physical workplace environment and non physical workplace environment significantly and partially affected employee’s productivity, while the Fcount was 14.831 and its p-Value was 0.000 (&lt;0.05) indicated that physical workplace environment and non physical workplace environment simultanously affected employee’s productivity. The regression coificient (R2) was 0.504 or 50.4 %, so it can be indicated that physical workplace environment and non-physical workplace environment simultanously affected employee’s productivity about 50.4%, and about 49.6% might be affected by other variables.

Organizational Ergonomics: Human Engineering Leading To Employee Well-Being

Human engineering is the application of mental health and physiological principles to the structure of products, procedures, and schemes. The aim of human engineering is to decrease human mistake, improve productivity level, and increase safety and well-being with a particular focus on the association between the human and the thing of intrigue. Practicing good ergonomics leads to increased productivity, improved health and safety of workers, higher job satisfaction and retention of employees. Sampling technique is probability, multistage sampling , sampling units garment companies, The multiple regression analysis was used to study the relationship between the factors influencing ergonomics, resilience, subjective and objective well-being. This study was conducted in India’s Textile hub of Garment industry: Tiruppur District, Tamilnadu state. The data was collected from 453 garment industry employees through a structured questionnaire. The finding of this study organisational ergonomics, resilience, subjective well-being and objective well-being has strongly depends on physical workplace environment and machines. Task, but doesn’t have an effect of psychosocial factor. Subjective well-being strongly depends on Task, Organisational ergonomics, Resilience. Objective well-being is depends on organisational ergonomics. Proper workplace environment and good condition machinery creates better comfortable and safe workplace which leads to employee well-being. Human engineering factors (Physical workplace environment, Machines, Task, and Psychosocial Factor) facilitated by organisational ergonomics leads to a better employee well-being.

Editorial

Editorial

Team experiential cognitive style and team performance: The moderating impact of workplace setting

With an increasing need in organizations to come up with novel and useful ideas to renew and survive, team creativity has grown in importance to managers and researchers. As the cognitive resources of team members are the core input for team creativity, researchers increasingly look at team cognition in general and team cognitive styles in particular. In this research stream, the environmental context in which team members are embedded has received limited attention. We therefore experimentally test variation in the physical workplace environment and how it influences the relationship between team experiential cognitive styles and team creativity. Manipulating the nature of architectural elements in the room, we distinguish between a physical workplace with (i) experiential cues and (ii) rational cues. We also use a control condition where architectural elements are absent in the workplace environment. We rely on resource‐matching theory to build our hypotheses. Using data of 75 student teams of a Dutch university, we find that the relationship between teams' experiential cognitive style and team creativity was positive in the control condition. This positive relationship became insignificant in the two conditions where experiential or rational cues were introduced. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Advancing Equity in Nephrology: Enhancing Care for LGBTQ+ Patients and Our Workforce.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals face social, economic, legal, health, and health care–related disparities amid evolving threats to sociopolitical advances made in the last decade ([1][1],[2][2]). In response, organizations, including the National Institutes of

Ergonomic Workplace: An analysis based on Gender and Employee Wellbeing

Garment production industry is often characterized by long working hours and overtime, putting an extra burden on women who serve as main caregivers in their families and societies. The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the organisational ergonomics involved in designing physical workplace Environment, Task, Machines and Psychosocial factors at the industry .The employee resilience and wellbeing of employees are to be probed based on gender. The methodology is by administering questionnaire with seven variables to various garment industry employees at Tirupur (India’s Knitwear Capital) a place in Tamilnadu .The sample size is 453 in which , 268 (59.2%) are Men and 185(40.8) are Women .The reliability test , test of significance using analysis of variance and a Path model is done by SPSS 21.0 and AMOS software .The findings narrates there is significant difference in their perception based on gender on the variables Physical workplace environment, Machines, Task, Psychosocial factors , Organisational ergonomics, Resilience, and Well-being. Though the education level and employee retention is the same across gender there is still discrimination as per their view regarding workplace ergonomics. As the expectation of Women at the garment industry is different, it is high time to reframe the Human resource policies at Workplace.

The effect of organization learning culture, physical work place environment, employee trust, employee satisfaction on employee performance of Thailand pharmaceutical industry

The aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of physical work place environment (PWPE), organizational learning culture (OLC), employee satisfaction (ES) and employee trust (ET) on the employee performance (EP) of the pharmaceutical industry of Thailand. For this purpose, data was collected from 251 employees of the pharmaceutical industry in Thailand which yield a 41.2% response rate. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) results have shown that OLC has positive and significant association with the EP. In the same vein, PWPE also shown the positive and significant association with the EP. Moreover, ET also has a positive and significant association with the EP. In addition, ES also has a positive and significant association with the EP of the pharmaceutical industry of the Thailand. Based on the findings,the current study contributed a body of literature which could become a new area of research in future. The research limitations and future directions of the study are also discussed at the end of the study.

Differences in Associations of Menopausal Symptoms with Job-related Stress Factors in Full-time and Part-time Workers in Japan

Background: A large proportion of women in the workforce including part-time workers and full-time workers are in the period of menopausal transition. The degree and kind of menopausal symptoms may be different in full-time workers and part-time workers since the contents of job-related stress in full-time workers and part-time workers are different. We compared menopausal symptoms and job-related stress factors in full-time workers and part-time workers and the associations of menopausal symptoms with job-related stress in both groups. Methods: Health questionnaires including Greene’s climacteric scales and job-related stress scores were given to 613 female general workers aged 45-60 years in Japan. Results: Total Greene’s climacteric scores were not significantly different in full-time workers and part-time workers. Symptoms with high frequencies in both full-time and part-time workers were feeling tired or lacking in energy, loss of interest in sex and irritability. Scores for quantitative overload, qualitative overload and interpersonal relationships in full-time workers were significantly lower than those in part-time workers, while scores for physical overload and workplace environment in part-time workers were significantly lower than those in full-time workers. Psychological symptoms showed significant associations with job control, interpersonal relationships, workplace environment, job fitness and job satisfaction in full-time workers. Conclusions: The degree of job-related stress and the association of job-related stress with menopausal symptoms were different in full-time workers and part-time workers, though menopausal symptoms were similar in full-time and part-time workers. Different strategies for management of menopausal symptoms may be needed in full-time workers and part-time workers.

Barriers and facilitators to healthy eating for nurses in the workplace: an integrative review.

The aim was to conduct an integrative systematic review to identify barriers and facilitators to healthy eating for working nurses. There is growing recognition of the influence of the workplace environment on the eating habits of the workforce, which in turn may contribute to increased overweight and obesity. Overweight and obesity exact enormous costs in terms of reduced well-being, worker productivity and increased risk of non-communicable diseases. The workplace is an ideal place to intervene and support healthy behaviours. This review aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to nurses' healthy eating in the workplace. Integrative mixed method review. Five electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, MEDLINE, PROQUEST Health and Medicine, ScienceDirect and PsycINFO. Reference lists were searched. Included papers were published in English between 2000-2016. Of 26 included papers, 21 were qualitative and five quantitative. An integrative literature review was undertaken. Quality appraisal of included studies used standardized checklists. A social-ecological framework was used to examine workplace facilitators and constraints to healthy eating, derived from the literature. Emergent themes were identified by thematic analysis. Review participants were Registered, Enrolled and/or Nurse Assistants primarily working in hospitals in middle or high income countries. The majority of studies reported barriers to healthy eating related to adverse work schedules, individual barriers, aspects of the physical workplace environment and social eating practices at work. Few facilitators were reported. Overall, studies found the workplace exerts a considerable negative influence on nurses' dietary intake. Reorientation of the workplace to promote healthy eating among nurses is required.