Healthy Work

In episode 57, we are fortunate enough to be joined by Drs. Jenna McChesney and Lori Foster. They talked about their most recent paper (McChesney & Foster, 2023). They conducted an experiment to see if disclosing anxiety and depression on LinkedIn harms potential job prospects. They find that it very well might!

You can find Dr. McChesney on the website formerly known as twitter at @jenna_mcchesney or her faculty website https://www.meredith.edu/directory/jenna-mcchesney/.

You can find Dr. Foster on her personal website https://www.lorifoster.org/ or her faculty website https://chass.ncsu.edu/people/llfoster/.

You can find the UN Sustainable Development goals at https://sdgs.un.org/goals.

You can find the WHO and ILO joint policy brief on mental health at work at https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240057944.

Remember that we provide transcripts for our episodes on our substack.

In episode 56, we are fortunate enough to be joined by Dr. Valentina Reyes. She talked about her most recent paper (Reyes, Unanue, Vignoles, & Van den Broeck, 2023). Dr. Reyes outlines what it means to be materialistic at work and how that can hinder your ability to meet your psychological needs, ultimately leading to feelings of burnout.

You can find Dr. Reyes on her faculty website (https://www.udp.cl/academico/valentina-reyes-ahumada/).

In episode 55, we are fortunate enough to be joined by Steven Zhou. He talked about his most recent paper, (Zhou, Aitken, & Kuykendall, 2023). In a Healthy Work first, we are covering a theory paper! Steven outlines his definition of callings, including an updated understanding of callings that can help people navigate finding fulfillment in these modern economic times.

You can find Steven on the website formerly known as twitter @szzhou4 or his website www.stevenzhou.us.

Check out our previous episode on the downside of certain occupational callings during COVID-19: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LfixWmHt7aL6lPlhELhl6

Maryana is out on parental leave, but the show must go on. We're excited to bring you a series of interviews with authors of recent papers on occupational health and wellbeing. The format will largely be the same as previous episodes, but instead of Maryana or Keaton explaining the paper, you get the author doing it in their own words. Look out for the first episode of this series on Monday.

In episode 54 we chat about a paper by Darouei, Delanoeije, & Verbruggen. Across two studies of around 80 employees each, on average, people who perceived work interruptions at home positively were more engaged and less stressed. That said, on days when there was a work interruption at home, it didn't matter how you perceived that particular interruption, it didn't affect engagement or strain.

In episode 53 we chat about a paper by Seulki "Rachel" Jang, Ho Kwan Cheung, & Michael Ford. In a study of over 100 workers, they found that feeling like your company cares about health and wellbeing predicts feeling less exhausted and, in turn, fewer insomnia symptoms. However, they found that this was not the case for people with high BMI. We talk a bit in our episode about limitations of the BMI, especially at an individual level, but if you want to know more we provide the link to two other podcast episodes by maintenance phase below.

Paper: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joop.12457

Maintenance Phase episode on BMI: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Hm6oJt40eeAHhKseCtju8

Maintenance Phase episode on workplace wellness interventions: https://open.spotify.com/episode/71WyoWszjT2j0kF6ySUsxA

Maintenance Phase episode on the link between body fat and health outcomes: https://open.spotify.com/episode/54Rt3Unq8epTwSMmSuCWei

In episode 52 we chat about a paper by Nicola von Allmen, Andreas Hirschi, Anne Burmeister, and Kristen Shockley. They published a meta-analysis (a study of all the studies on a topic) on work-nonwork interventions. They found that largely, the most impactful interventions were those that directly increased personal resources such as time, mindfulness, and resilience. They also found that not nearly enough studies explored reducing demands as an intervention.

Paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-79121-001

In Episode 51, we chat about a paper by Smith and colleagues (2023) about deciding to exercise after work. The study found that most days, people are in a slightly energy depleted but not highly emotional state, which means that the decision to work out is largely up to their trait health orientation. On days when it's all bad mood and low energy (thanks to high work demands), working out is less likely, and on days when things are going great, great mood and high energy (thanks to low work demands), working out is more likely.

In Episode 50, we chat about some big developments in our lives that have kept us from the podcast, and also about a paper by Xie and colleagues (in press) that focuses on the impact of negative workplace gossip on people’s ability to detach from work. Take away: being the subject of workplace gossip makes it hard to detach, and ultimately harms your satisfaction with life.

Xie, J., Huang, Q., Yan, M., & Liang, Y. (2023). It is Tough to Detach from Gossip: The Impact of Perceived Negative Workplace Gossip on Life Satisfaction. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1-15. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-023-09894-8

In Episode 49, we discuss a paper (Ocampo et al., 2023) on the impacts of HIV stigma on workers. People who perceived higher levels of HIV stigma from their peers reported higher fear and shame, and this shame translated into worse job performance. But people with healthier immune systems and higher core self-evaluations were less likely to have shame translate to worsened job performance.We release this episode today, March 20, 2023, in honor of National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.