In this PrOPEL Hub International Research seminar, Dr Tahira Probst and Professor Sara Connolly explore the impact of COVID-19 on employee health, safety, and performance.
Over the past 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the work- and non-work lives of employees and caused organizations and public health officials to confront new threats to the health, safety, and well-being of workers. While many employees were abruptly forced to adapt to working from home, millions of essential workers (e.g. health care, food industry, utilities) were exempted from stay-at-home orders facing daily exposure to the coronavirus and economic pressures to remain at work while ill.
In this video, Dr. Tahira Probst draws on a 7-wave longitudinal investigation of work- and non-work psychosocial predictors of employee health, safety, and performance conducted by her lab from April 2020 to February 2021.
The talk, chaired by Professor Sara Connolly explores:
• the relationship between economic stressors and COVID-19 health prevention behaviours;
• the impact of regional lockdown orders and the social safety net on the above relationships;
• the influence of workplace COVID-19 safety climate on the development of pandemic fatigue and moral disengagement among employees and their subsequent mental health and performance; and,
• the indirect effect of workplace COVID-19 safety climate on employee work and non-work sickness presenteeism.
More about our speaker:
Dr. Tahira M. Probst is a Professor of Psychology at Washington State University (USA) where she directs the Coalition for Healthy and Equitable Workplaces lab. Her research focuses on the health, safety and performance-related outcomes of economic stressors (including job insecurity, financial strain, and underemployment), as well as multilevel contextual variables that influence these relationships. A second stream of research focuses on psychosocial predictors of work-related injury under-reporting. She has published over 150 journal articles and book chapters on stress and health-related topics. She is past Editor of Stress & Health and sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Occupational Health Science, International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Military Psychology, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and the Journal of Business and Psychology. Her recent research focuses on work-related impacts of the pandemic (e.g., adherence to the CDC COVID-19 prevention guidelines and sickness presenteeism).
