The evolving landscape of Occupational Health Psychology

Almost 35 years ago, Keita and Jones (1990) drew attention to the importance of blending 'occupational health' and psychology, to address prominent workplace concerns about occupational stress and employee health. They exhorted psychologists to apply their particular knowledge and skills to these pressing issues in work settings. This call is just as relevant today. Now, however, the marriage of occupational health and psychology is well-established, with many significant occupational health psychology (OHP) practitioners focused on workers' wellbeing and the effectiveness of organisations as employment settings. 

The field of OHP is continually evolving and pivoting to tackle the newly emerging complexities facing people and their organisations. The 2024 Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (EOHP) is a timely and topical source of information and reflections from OHP leaders about the many facets of OHP, the emerging trends, and the implications for both research and practice. 

With 72 contributions, the Encyclopedia covers a wide range of issues. For this article, two transformations affecting all of us are considered for their substantial and highly visible impacts in the changing nature of work: the rise of flexible and hybrid working and associated job crafting; and technology and technostress, including emerging generative AI impacts.

The rise of flexible and hybrid working, and job crafting

This section draws on the information in the EOHP entries: Bakker (2024) Job demands and resource; Karanika-Murray and Biron (2024) Remote work; Newlin, Filetti and Chaves (2024) Gig work; Parker, Borman and Camgoz (2024) Work design theories; Siu (2024) Flexible work practices, including family-friendly practices; Tims and Twemlow (2024) A contemporary view on job crafting.

Ever since the pandemic, and with technology advancements, employees working flexibly, remotely, or in a hybrid arrangement (remote and on-site) has become widespread in many offices across the globe. Indeed, for over a decade before Covid-19 hit, research indicated (Norgate & Cooper, 2020) that many people wanted to work more flexibly in terms of time or location. But the financial crisis of 2008-2012 created a 'presenteeism' culture – extending this concept beyond 'working when sick' (Biron & Karanika-Murray, 2024), to a broader reluctance of workers to take advantage of flexible work options due to their job insecurities. 

Covid was the game-changing catalyst for flexible and remote working – a "global experiment on flexible work practices" (Karanika-Murray & Biron, 2024, p.165). And technological advances in digital work solutions enabled the alternative work arrangements. Employers finally overcame their managerial resistances, realising that their staff could work more flexibly and/or remotely without the feared negative performance consequences. Rather, where flexible work is an option (as it is not for all occupations or work types), there can be positive outcomes, both for workers (such as reduced stress and strains, improved health and well-being, and accessing family-friendly employment policies and practices (FEPPS)), and for their employers (such as lower absenteeism and talent retention). 

It is important to note from an OHP perspective that there are also potential disadvantages for flexible or remote working – for example, limiting interactions between employees and their colleagues and managers can lead to disengagement from work, stress, and may complicate employee supervision and motivation.

Post-pandemic, most employers were confronted with finding the appropriate model of flexibility in the context of their organisation and sector. Some tried to re-institute the 5-day working week in the office again, but with little success. The genie had left the bottle, and the difficulty of recruiting the younger generations (i.e., young millennials and Gen Z) led them back to some form of hybrid working (O'Meara & Cooper, 2022), which is now a 'new normal' for many (Hopkins & Bardoel, 2023, as cited in Karanika-Murray & Biron, 2024). In most cases this means three days in the office and two days at home a week, or the reverse. In operation, this is not 'truly' flexible work where the employee decides when or where they work, but rather the employer and employee agreeing, idiosyncratically, on a psychological contract between them regarding mutual expectations, usually with the resultant hybrid approach. This might mean an employee, with the agreement of their manager, would come into the office whenever it was necessary, or met their needs or commitments, as long as they delivered to the bottom line and met their target objectives. 

Flexible working also extends beyond traditional employment settings to new work practices – notably the gig economy, mediated by technology. This has grown rapidly in recent years, and is an emerging area for OHP attention, as the precarity, isolation, and boundaryless nature of gig work have their own significant potential to endanger the health and wellbeing of the gig workers, particularly where the gig is their primary income source. 

This increasing phenomenon of employees having more choice about their working arrangements, and the fast-developing technologies paralleling with these developments, raises the relevance of job crafting. This refers to the self-initiated ways that employees make proactive changes to their jobs, beyond the given job description (Tims et al., 2012, in Tims & Twemlow, 2024). This may be to enhance their work meaning and identity by crafting around their work tasks or relationships, or to endeavour to proactively influence their job demands and job resources to achieve better fit with their abilities and preferences – in turn influencing their well-being. With the recent growth in flexible and remote work, job crafting may now operate in a context where employees find themselves with more autonomy in crafting when and where they work, and even what work they actually choose to do in those situations. 

This shift brings both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, it allows employees to 'personalise' the way they do their work, potentially leading to increased job satisfaction and engagement. On the other, it risks exacerbating work-life conflicts due to 'boundarylessness' – blurred boundaries between work and personal life; and intensifying the 'always-on' culture that has become synonymous with the digital age. Also, job crafting impacts not just the crafter, but their supervisors and coworkers, and organisations must weigh up how to support effective employee autonomy and the benefits of self-directed work, such as employees feeling challenged and engaged, with possible downsides such as burnout, lowered job performance or even work avoidance. 

It is also interesting to consider the role of emerging technologies, particularly generative AI, in the future of job crafting, and work design more generally. These advanced systems can be resources, able to perform certain tasks and potentially freeing up employees to focus on other aspects of their work – ideally, to apply their skills and engage in the more meaningful and creative aspects of their work. How will job crafting evolve as AI becomes more integrated into work processes? Will it lead to more fulfilling work experiences, or will it create new sources of stress and uncertainty, or even work avoidance and resistance?

Technology and technostress

This section draws on the information in the EOHP entries: Bakker (2024) Job demands and resources; Parker, Borman and Camgoz (2024) Work design theories; Stich and Tarafdar (2024) Technostress.

This leads us to the second key area of focus: the inexorable incursions of technological and digital change into workplaces. Over the last decade, the impact of technology on the health and wellbeing of workers has become increasingly evident as a psychosocial safety issue. That is, as work increasingly moves into digital spaces, new psychosocial risks emerge, necessitating a re-evaluation of what constitutes a safe work environment. 

However, technology at work has a complex relationship with employee well-being. The Job Demands-Resources model, a cornerstone of occupational health psychology, provides a useful framework for understanding this relationship: technology can serve as both a job demand and a job resource, often simultaneously. While it can increase workload and cognitive demands, it can also provide resources for more efficient work processes and enable greater autonomy. Either way, it can impact on well-being. This is a defining feature of technostress – "…the stress that users of everyday information technologies experience when they feel threatened and overwhelmed by the demands made by such technologies" (Stich & Tarafdar, 2024, p.188). The very features and functionality that people find useful in modern technologies can also be appraised as disturbing threats – technostress creators – leading to negative outcomes including emotional exhaustion, decreased job satisfaction and organisational commitment, or technology avoidance. 

Technostress research has blossomed particularly on how the email culture has interfered, in the age of the smartphone, with people's private and family life. The evidence consistently shows that uncontrolled email usage and overload is adversely affecting worker's health, their work-life balance, and their performance. This constant connectivity enabled by modern technology, while offering flexibility and efficiency, also brings with it a host of potential stressors. Information overload, the pressure to be constantly available, and the blurring of work-life boundaries can all contribute to heightened levels of stress and burnout. 

The negative health consequences of uncontrolled workplace emails have led to the Right to Disconnect laws in a number of countries, most recently in Australia. This law requires managers to limit their communications with staff when staff members are not working, including during weekends and when on leave. The first country to pass this law was France, now followed by Spain and Portugal, limiting the ability or employers to send emails out of office hours. Germany has not made it a law but instead a 'workplace guidance', which the UK is now also considering. Although workers' email overload is a health risk factor, it is also a productivity issue, with more research needed to establish its impact.

However, addressing technostress is not as simple as implementing blanket policies restricting after-hours communication. The global nature of many businesses, coupled with the diverse needs and preferences of employees, requires a more nuanced approach. Occupational health psychologists are thus faced with the challenge of developing strategies that can effectively mitigate technostress, while maintaining the benefits of digital connectivity.

The introduction of generative AI into the workplace adds another layer of complexity to these considerations. Generative AI has immense potential to augment human capabilities in areas such as data analysis, content creation, and problem-solving. While this could have the potential to alleviate some forms of work-related stress by automating tasks and providing intelligent assistance, it also has significant potential as a technostress creator, particularly in techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty. Employees may be 'overwhelmed', develop concerns about job security, and feel pressure from the need to constantly upskill to keep pace with technological advancements. This all contributes to a new landscape of psychosocial risks associated with technology that must be navigated. 

The 2024 Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology serves as a valuable resource in understanding and addressing these and other workplace issues. It provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field, and future directions for research and practice. It is a resource to inform evidence-based approaches to promoting healthy, productive, and meaningful work experiences.

• The Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology is edited by Cary Cooper, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK, Paula Brough, Professor of Organisational Psychology; Director, Centre for Work, Organisation & Wellbeing; Griffith University and Vicki L. Anderson, Centre for Work, Organisation & Wellbeing, and Department of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia.

References 

Bakker, A. B. (2024). Job demands and resources. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 100-102). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Biron, C., & Karanika-Murray, M. (2024). Presenteeism interventions. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 146-148). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Cooper, C., Brough, P., & Anderson, V. L. (2024). Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Karanika-Murray, M., & Biron, C. (2024). Remote work. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 165-168). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Keita, G. P., & Jones, J. M. (1990). Reducing Adverse Reaction to Stress in the Workplace. American Psychologist, 45(10), 1137-1141.

Newlin, A. B., Filetti M. & Chaves, J. B. (2024). Gig work. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 81-83). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Norgate, S. H., & Cooper, C. L. (Eds.). (2020). Flexible work: Designing our healthier future lives. Routledge.

O'Meara, S., & Cooper, C. (2022). Remote Workplace Culture: How to Bring Energy and Focus to Remote Teams. Kogan Page Publishers.

Parker, S. K., Borman, T. C., & Camgoz, E. I. (2024). Work design theories. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 206-209). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Siu, O. L. (2024). Flexible work practices, including family-friendly practices. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 71-74). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Stich, J-F., & Tarafdar, M. (2024). Technostress. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 188-190). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Tims, M., & Twemlow, M. (2024). A contemporary view on job crafting. In C. Cooper, P. Brough & V. L. Anderson (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 4-6). Edward Elgar Publishing.