How important is job quality for employee productivity? Does it affect a person’s performance above and beyond the impact it has on their mental health?
In this week’s blog, we share some of the key findings from our latest briefing which looks at the relationship between the working environment and culture, and staff productivity. Its findings suggest that negative psychological work experiences can lead to productivity loss, independent of employee mental health status.
We analysed survey data on working conditions, mental health and productivity at a large retail company, and found that the work environment, relationships and culture play a key direct role on individual productivity and performance.
In the organisation studied, four groups of employees were identified based on their scores on mental health and productivity, defined through good/bad mental health and high/low productivity. These groups were:
The responses were provided by one retail organisation that participated in the 2018 and 2019 waves of Britain’s Healthiest Workplace survey. Jobs at this organisation varied from manual labour and customer-facing roles to office, desk-based work.
Two thirds of respondents were female, and two thirds reported an annual income below £40,000. Over 70% reported no serious health conditions.
While we cannot be confident of how representative this case is of the sector on a whole, case study evidence is an important source of learning about how the different job quality aspects work in real-world settings. They can be used alongside other research to learn more about what works, how, and why various actions make a difference to wellbeing and productivity.
Employee productivity loss was defined as:
This was measured with the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment (WPAI) tool, a composite measure including:
Results are expressed as a percentage of hours lost in the prior week, where 0% represents no productivity loss, and 100% represents complete productivity loss.
Mental ill-health was defined in line with mental distress or poor mental health. It was measured using the six-question Kessler scale, which asks how respondents felt in the last 30 days. It measures if participants feel:
Responses are added together, giving an overall score of 0 to 24, with a higher score representing higher levels of psychological distress.
Job quality – or psychological work factors – was measured through responses to individual ‘to what extent do you agree with’ statements, in a five-point Likert scale, including:
The graphic below shows a breakdown of the behaviours, psychosocial factors, mental health scores and productivity levels associated with each group:
You can also find the typical sociodemographic characteristics for each group on page 5 of the briefing.
With these findings, below are the recommendations and implications for employers, HR staff and wellbeing leads.
In the briefing, we break these down further to share a specific set of recommendations for each of the four types of employees identified above.
Exploratory recommendations from this work include:
The adoption of bespoke programmes for specific groups of employees, together with programmes aimed at improving wellbeing in the workplace, may be an effective strategy.
You can find information on what we know about these recommended approaches – and what the evidence tells us about their impact on wellbeing – on page 7 of the briefing.
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