Effect of psychosocial safety climate on psychological distress via job resources, work engagement and workaholism: a multilevel longitudinal study

Abstract

Objective. Our innovation was to propose a multilevel model to explain how an organizational factor, psychosocial safety climate (PSC) – the climate for worker psychological health – related to work investment (work engagement and workaholism) and, in turn, psychological distress. Methods. Longitudinal data were collected in Peninsular Malaysia across 26 police departments from 392 police personnel, matched across 4 months, and were tested using hierarchical linear modeling. Results. The analysis revealed between-group effects linking PSC to job resources, to work engagement and to workaholism. When PSC operated by improving job resources, aside from increased work engagement, it could unwittingly boost workaholism. However, this only existed under low PSC conditions. The secondary function of PSC buffered the impact of job resources on workaholism and psychological distress. When PSC was high, job resources reduced both workaholism and psychological distress, suggesting that PSC enabled resources to do their job of mitigating unfavorable conditions. Conclusions. Results support a multilevel PSC-extended job demands–resources motivational path with cross-links, and PSC’s moderation function, as an explanation of worker psychological health. Confirming PSC as a leading indicator and the importance of a motivational path, this article presents new evidence in support of targeting PSC to improve worker psychological health.

Keywords:

• job resources
• psychological distress
• psychosocial safety climate
• workaholism
• work engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Postgraduate Research Grant 2013–2016 University of Malaya [Grant Number PG012-2013A].