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Abstract Background Digital interventions (DIs) have emerged as promising tools for promoting mental health in the workplace. However, evidence on if, how, and under what circumstances they affect positive outcomes requires elucidation. This systematic realist review aimed to synthesize current knowledge on contexts, mechanisms, and outcomes of workplace DIs to enhance mental health at work. Methods The review integrates elements of both systematic and realist review methodologies. Forty-four workplace mental health DIs studies were gathered through a systematic electronic search using PsycNet, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubPsych. Results Results showed that demographics, previous mental health, and personal skills were the main individual context factors influencing the success of DIs. Key mechanisms were DIs usage, frequency, adherence, and relevance of content triggering positive perceptual shifts. Results showed improvements in psychological resources, wellbeing, and affect. Reduced ill-health symptoms were also evidenced. Five propositions were developed on the contexts and mechanisms under which digital interventions yield positive outcomes for mental health at work. Conclusions This study highlights several areas where future research can expand our understanding of DIs in the workplace by examining interactions between mechanisms and cultural aspects influencing implementation.

In the industrial gas manufacturing sector, stringent safety protocols and proactive safety promotion are crucial to prevent hazardous incidents protect employees, customers, and the environment from the potential risks of handling and transporting these gases. Train The Trainer (TTT) programmes can be tailored to the organisation’s needs and cover various topics, such as handling hazardous materials, emergency response procedures, equipment use and ergonomics, and managing emergency response procedures. The B-SAFE project, designed based on the ‘Communities of Practice’ theoretical framework and adopting the TTT approach, aims to provide workers with tools and resources to increase work safety and reduce accidents by acting on underlying cognitive behaviour and processes. The present case study aims to present the Italian adaptation of the B-SAFE training programme, incorporating specific revisions resulting from previous research. Twenty-five Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) top and middle managers from a leading gas manufacturing firm participated in the five-module training. At the conclusion of each B-SAFE module, they filled out a short questionnaire to report their satisfaction with the training methods and content. The answers were analysed to gather feedback on the course. In general, participants found the course to be useful, satisfying, fun and easy.

IntroductionBased on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, the present study aimed to validate “The Technical and Administrative Staff Quality of Life At Work” (TASQ@work), a new tool to assess the quality of life at work in academia focused on technical and administrative staff.MethodsThis tool was developed by the QoL@Work research team, a group of expert academics in the field of work and organizational psychology affiliated with the Italian Association of Psychologists. The TASQ@work was elaborated in different steps. The first phase was aimed at the identification of the dimensions of the tool. The second phase was aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the tool. The validation process involved confirmatory analysis and measurement invariance of the various constructs selected. The analyses were performed in a convenience sample of two Italian universities in different regions (one in the Northwest and the second in Central Italy).ResultsThe sample was composed of 1820 Administrative Staff, comprising 69.4% from University 1 (N = 1,263) and 30.6% from University 2 (N = 557). The TASQ@work presented satisfactory psychometric properties (normality of the items, reliability and content, construct and nomological validity) and measurement invariance across gender, seniority, and Athenaeum.DiscussionThe results indicate that the tool can be considered a reliable and valid instrument to assess job demands, job resources, and outcomes in the working life of technical and administrative academic staff. In this perspective, the present study represents the first contribution to the debate on the psychosocial risks in academic contexts by presenting a new tool, the TASQ@work, aimed at contextualizing the JD-R model to understand the role played by psychosocial aspects in affecting the well-being of the academic employees.

Safety training promotes safety at work, in particular through the use of engaging methods. This study introduces a newly developed measure of individual engagement in safety training, and aims to analyze the psychometric proprieties of the scale. The safety training engagement scale (STE) consists of five items pertaining to the trainee’s dedication and absorption in a safety training session. Two studies are carried out to analyze the validity of the scale. The first study focuses on the construct (internal) validity, to examine the scale’s internal consistency and dimensional structure. The second study seeks to provide further evidence for construct validity by testing the external validity of the scale. The sample consists of 913 (study 1) and 133 (study 2) participants in safety training programs in the field of the chemical industry who were invited to fill the STE scale after attending a safety training course. The results provide support to affirm the validity and reliability of the scale. The discussion describes the implication and the limitations of using the STE scale in practical safety training programs, and outlines recommendations for research to improve the scale’s robustness.

This study investigated the reciprocal relationship between self-perceived employability (SPE) and psychological well-being (PWB), a connection previously suggested by theory but not yet explored empirically in early career research. Drawing from the Conservation of Resources theory, we analysed the reciprocal effects between SPE and PWB. Using data collected from 376 Italian university students and graduates, we tested the hypotheses with the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to analyse the SPE-PWB reciprocal linkage at both the between-person and within-person levels. While we observed a reciprocal SPE-PWB association across three waves at the between-person level, we obtained mixed findings at the within-person level. This study is the first to test the reciprocal associations between SPE and PWB among labour market entrants adopting a within-person approach. The findings offer new empirical insights into SPE during early career stages, with implications for both future research and practical applications.

Teachers and educators are experiencing turmoil under the drastic changes in educational practices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to research, transformational leaders effectively facilitate organizational change by fostering teachers’ sense of belonging and boosting social identity in their team members, which can result in better team well-being via higher team cohesion. Recently, research has increasingly explored the role of emotional contagion and its relationship with leadership. Accordingly, the current study aims to delve deeper into the role of emotional contagion in linking transformational leadership to cohesion among teachers in the school setting. To this purpose, 581 teachers from northern Italy filled out a self-report questionnaire (72.1% female, Mage = 47.06, and SDage = 11.42). A moderated mediation model was tested to assess the mediating role of organizational identification in the relationship between transformational leadership and team cohesion and how emotional contagion may moderate this association. The obtained results provided support to the hypothesized model. Overall, the present study corroborates the critical role of school principals’ behavior in fostering greater organizational identification among teachers, which is associated with better team cohesion. This study constitutes an early attempt to gain more insight into the role of emotional variables in explaining the influence of leadership behavior.

The present contribution aims at providing an innovative method for the assessment of human barriers, specifically addressing the framework of the energy industry, including offshore operations. Introducing a revised framework to analyse human errors, the methodology developed aims at extending the current Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) methods including psychosocial factors and barriers. The new methodology was developed extending and tailoring to the specific context the well-known framework set by two widely used HRA methodologies (SPAR-H and HEART). An innovative holistic framework, dedicated to the wide range of operations of the energy industry, was developed to assess human error probability (HEP). Human factors were considered safety barriers against human error: more specifically, workers were considered having an active role in shaping their own performance. The method developed introduced a revision of the Generic Task Types (GTT). Each GTT was then associated with a Nominal Error Probability (NEP). The NEP is then modified by the assessment of correction factors obtained from the assessment of conditions affecting task performance, in analogy with the Performance Shaping Factors (PSF) approach introduced by SPAR-H. The method proved to be easy to apply and the results obtained clearly show that human factors play a significant role in preventing workers from making errors while performing tasks by reducing human error probability.

The study aimed to extend the current knowledge of the relationship between job insecurity and performance. In line with traditional stress theories, work-family and burnout were hypothesized as serial mediators of the negative link between job insecurity and job performance. Also, the current study hypothesized that the association between job insecurity and the mediators [i.e., Work-family conflict (WFC) and burnout] could be buffered by perceived organizational justice among employees. Therefore, we empirically tested a moderated serial mediation model. Participants were 370 employees of an Italian multiservice social cooperative. Data were collected using a self-report questionnaire in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The obtained results indicated that WFC and burnout mediated the association between job insecurity and job performance. Furthermore, perceived organizational justice buffered the relationship between job insecurity and WFC. Concerning job burnout, the association with job insecurity was moderated only among employees perceiving medium and high levels of organizational justice. The moderated serial mediation index provided support to the role of organizational justice in decreasing the association between job insecurity and job performance. This study delves deeper into the variables explaining the relationship between job insecurity and job performance by testing a serial process mechanism that involved WFC and burnout. Additionally, the obtained results provide suggestions to organizations and managers regarding the protective role of organizational justice to sustain employees’ mental health and performance. Practical implications at the organizational and managerial level are provided, along with a focus on the actual impact of the pandemic.

Safety motivation is, nowadays, acknowledged as a key determinant of safety performance. The relationship between motivation, work injuries and accidents has been confirmed by numerous studies that found that safety behavior is associated with fewer injuries and accidents and that some safety behavior, voluntary safety behavior (such as safety participation), is largely induced by motivation to work safely. Safety motivation can be considered as a multi-dimensional construct, in which it is possible to distinguish between controlled safety motivation and autonomous safety motivation on the basis of the degree of internalization of safety motivation at the individual level. The aim of this study was to shed some light on the antecedents of safety motivation and, in particular, on the role of safety values (i.e. individual perception of the priority given to safety at work) as a mediator between perceived quality of Personal protective equipment (PPE) and both dimensions of safety motivation: autonomous and controlled. The sample consisted of 426 employees who worked in three process industries. The data was collected by an anonymous questionnaire with validated measures. A statistical mediation model was adopted to analyze the data. The results show that general safety motivation is affected by perceived equipment quality directly and indirectly (via company safety value). Controlled safety motivation is not affected by perceived equipment quality (directly or indirectly). On the contrary, autonomous safety motivation is affected by perceived equipment quality directly and indirectly (via company safety value).The results are essential to define how PPE should be introduced not only to protect the workers but to increase their safety motivation too.

The frequency of conflicts with patients’ families is one of the main contributors to the amount of emotional demands that healthcare professionals must tackle to prevent the occurrence of burnout symptoms. On the other hand, research evidence suggests that hardiness could enable healthcare professionals to handle their responsibilities and problems effectively. Based on the health impairment process of the Job Demands–Resources model, the main goal of this study was to delve deeper into the relationship between conflict with patients’ families, emotional demands, and exhaustion, as well as to test the buffering role of hardiness. Data were collected from a sample of N = 295 healthcare professionals working in a private hospital in Northern Italy. Most of them were women (78.6%) with a mean age of 40.62 years (SD = 9.50). The mediation of emotional demands within the association between conflict with families and emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of hardiness was tested using a bootstrapping approach. In the current sample, emotional demands mediated the association between conflict with families and exhaustion among healthcare professionals. Moreover, this relationship decreased among individuals with higher levels of hardiness. These findings contribute to the current understanding of the negative impact played by conflict with families on healthcare professionals’ psychological well-being. Furthermore, they corroborated the role of hardiness as a personal resource that could prevent the occurrence of burnout symptoms. In addition to manage—and decrease—episodes of conflict with patients and their families, organizations in the healthcare sector should develop interventions aimed at fostering employees’ hardiness and, consequently, tackle job demands ingrained in their profession (i.e., emotional demands).

Nowadays, the intensity of care organizational model has been adopted in several Italian hospitals in order to create specific areas dedicated to patients reporting homogeneous needs of care. The present paper aims at describing the organizational intervention Inside the change, designed to explore the context and assess the impact of the implementation of the Intensity of cure model in an Italian hospital. Inside the change was composed of two segments: i) the evaluation of attitudes toward change and workers’ well-being (quantitative phase); ii) the conduction of a consulting process aimed to identify critical issues and the related improvement actions (qualitative phase). The results showed that workers (i.e., physicians, nurses, healthcare assistants) involved in the change process showed higher levels of work-related well-being symptoms. In line with this result, the second stage of the intervention had the goal of improving workers’ involvement in organizational change, together with the identification of suitable improvement actions. Data collected one year after the intervention suggest that the whole performance of healthcare organizations may be enhanced by investments in monitoring and improving organizational processes, particularly for those focused on HR management.

The current study aims to test a moderated-mediation model in which occupational self-efficacy determines the indirect effect of negative stereotypes about older workers in the organization both on psychological engagement in the work domain and on attitudes toward development opportunities through identification with the company. The survey involved 1,501 Italian subjects aged over 50 who were employed by a major large-scale retailer. Consistently with the Social Identity Theory and the Social Exchange Theory, results showed that the perception of negative stereotypes about older workers in the organization is associated with low identification with the company and, subsequently, with poor psychological engagement in the work domain and with attitudes indicating very little interest in development opportunities. In addition, this association was found to be stronger in older workers with higher and medium levels of occupational self-efficacy. These findings suggest that organizations should discourage the dissemination of negative stereotypes about older workers in the workplace because they may lead to older workers’ disengagement from the work domain and their loss of interest in development opportunities.

Promoting academic success among undergraduate students is crucial for tackling the need to foster employability competencies. Low levels of academic attainment in higher education, along with the increasing number of persons participating in tertiary education, represent crucial trends, which need to be studied in order to develop efficient retention practices. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between relevant factors that can foster academic success: learning strategies, future orientation, and academic self-efficacy. To this purpose, a longitudinal study was performed on a sample of N = 87 undergraduate students from one of the largest Italian universities (63.4% males, 74.2% enrolled in the first year). Participants filled in an online questionnaire at two different time points, with a time lag of 12 months. Results of a moderated mediation model indicated that the relationship between learning strategies at Time 1 (T1) and Grade Point Average (GPA) at Time 2 (T2) was mediated by students’ future orientation. Moreover, this association was moderated by T1 academic self-efficacy. These results suggest that learning strategies positively influence GPA through an enhanced future orientation, in particular when students report high or medium levels of self-efficacy. The current findings invite a thorough review of training interventions for improving academic achievement.

Organizational safety is not only influenced by technological aspects and technical skills, but also by such factors, as regulatory and business pressures, job demands, workers’ behaviours and skill. However, a need to consider Non-Technical Skills (NTS), that can contribute to a safer and more efficient task performance should be considered. A research group of the University of Bologna developed an organizational intervention named “NoTeS – Non-Technical Skills for Safety”, which aims to give an effective answer to companies that want to enhance safety in their own work environment. The paper describes the four phases of this intervention. In addition, safety interventions in chemical plants are analysed. Finally, the first positive outcome of improving safety in chemical plants based on participants’ reactions, behaviour and interesting perspectives is discussed.

In occupational health interventions, there is a debate as to whether standardized or tailored measures should be used to identify which aspects of the psychosocial work environment should be targeted in order to improve employees’ well-being. Using the Job Demands-Resources model, the main aim of the present study is to demonstrate how a mixed methods approach to conducting screening enables the identification of potential context-dependent demands and resources in the workplace, which should to be targeted by the intervention. Specifically, we used a mixed methods exploratory sequential research design. First, we conducted four focus groups (N = 37) in a sample of employees working in grocery stores in Italy. The qualitative results allowed to identify one possible context-specific job demand: the use of a work scheduling IT software, whose implementation resulted in a high rotation between different market’s departments. From the qualitative results, this context-specific demand seemed to be related to workers’ well-being. Thus, in a subsequent questionnaire survey (N = 288), we included this demand together with generic measures of social support and psychological well-being. Results confirmed that this context-specific job demand was related to emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, it was found that social support moderated the relationship between this specific job demand and emotional exhaustion showing among employees whose activities depended on the IT software, employees that perceived higher levels of social support from colleagues experienced lower levels of emotional exhaustion with respect to their colleagues who perceived lower levels of social support. The present study confirms that mixed methods approach is useful in occupational health intervention research and offers a way forward on helping organizations prioritize their intervention activities.

The present study examined the career goal management strategies of Italian young adults. Based on the dual-process framework of goal management, assimilation and accommodation, which are considered adaptive personal resources, were hypothesized to be associated with young adults' career goal engagement and career goal disengagement. Perceived employability and career adaptability were also hypothesized to play a mediating role in these associations. A two-time study was carried out among Italian university students (N = 294). The results confirmed that assimilation was positively associated with career goal engagement and perceived employability mediated this relationship. Additionally, assimilation was found to be negatively associated with career goal disengagement, whereas accommodation was positively associated with career goal disengagement. These findings have implications in career counseling and university programs related to young adults' university-to-work transitions.

El objetivo del presente estudio fue examinar las relaciones longitudinales entre el engagement en el trabajo, los problemas de salud mental, la satisfacción laboral y el rendimiento extra-laboral (tradicionalmente considerados como " consecuencias " del engagement) en términos de causalidad recíproca. Partiendo de la teoría de conservación de los recursos, la teoría de ampliación y construcción de las emociones positivas y los estudios anteriores, nuestra hipótesis fue que las relaciones entre el engagement y esos resultados son recíprocas en el tiempo. El estudio se realizó en una muestra de 157 maestros de escuela y el intervalo de tiempo era de cinco meses. Los resultados de análisis de modelos de ecuaciones estructurales muestran que el modelo de las relaciones recíprocas entre el engagement y los resultados mostraba el mejor ajuste a los datos. Específicamente, el engagement en T1 predijo los problemas de salud mental, la satisfacción laboral y las conductas de ciudadanía organizacional en T2. Por otra parte, los problemas de salud mental en T1 se relacionaban negativamente con el engagement en T2, mientras que la satisfacción laboral en T1 y los comportamientos organizacionales de ciudadanía en T1se relacionaron positivamente con el engagement en T2. En general, nuestros resultados proporcionan evidencia de una influencia recíproca entre engagement en el trabajo y estos constructos, lo que significa que ninguno de ellos puede considerarse sólo como causa o sólo como consecuencia.

Nowadays organizations have to cope with two related challenges: maintaining an engaged and highly performing workforce and, at the same time, protecting and increasing employees’ well-being and job satisfaction under conditions of a generalized increase of job overload, in an increasingly growing older population. According to the motivational process of the JD-R model, a work environment with many organizational resources will foster work engagement, which in turn will increase the likelihood of positive personal and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, performance, and intention to stay. However, it is not clear how this motivational process could work in different age cohorts, as older workers may have different priorities to those of younger colleagues. Postulating the existence of a gain-cycle in the relationship between work engagement and outcomes, in this study we tested a longitudinal moderated mediation model in which job satisfaction increases over time through an increment in work engagement. We hypothesized that this process is moderated by job workload and aging. We collected data in public administrations in Northern Italy in order to measure work engagement and job satisfaction. 556 workers aged between 50 to 64 replied to the survey twice (the first time and eight months later). The findings confirmed a moderated mediation model, in which job satisfaction at time 1 increased work engagement, which in turn fostered job satisfaction eight months later, confirming the hypothesized gain-cycle. This relationship was shown to be moderated by the joint influence of job demand intensity and age: higher job demands and younger age are related to the maximum level of level gain cycle, while the same high level of job demands, when associated with older age, appears unable to stimulate a similar effect. The results confirm that, on one hand, older workers cannot be seen as a homogeneous group and, on the other hand, the importance of considering the role played by the gain cycle of resources. Our findings show that age matters, and that greater consideration should be devoted to age differences in order to design appropriate human resources practices that foster work engagement and satisfaction.

The present study contributes to the literature on the JobDemands-Resources Model in the Italian school context.The aim of this paper is to examine how the interactionbetween work-family conflict (i.e., a typical job demand)and opportunities to learn and to develop and self-efficacy(i.e., typical job and personal resources, respectively)affect the core dimensions of burnout (exhaustion anddepersonalization) and work engagement (vigor and dedication).Hypotheses were tested with a cross-sectionaldesign among 143 teachers of a junior high school in thenorth of Italy. Results of moderated multiple regressionanalysis partially supported the hypotheses as the opportunitiesto learn and to develop buffered against theaversive effects of work-family conflict on depersonalization,whereas self-efficacy moderated the relationshipbetween work-family conflict and vigor. From a practicalviewpoint, our findings suggest that opportunities tolearn and to develop and self-efficacy are important resourcesthat help teachers to reduce the negative effectsrelated to work-family conflict.

The aim of the present study is to identify the psychosocial factors that are more related to the risk of workplace bullying in the organizational contexts. According to the work environment hypothesis, job demands, job control, perception of equity and leadership have been considered. It has been hypothesizedthat all these variables infl uence directly negative acts and also their effects are moderated by perception of colleagues. In order to investigate these relationships, a self-report questionnaire has been administered to 148 participants who represented all the population of a structure of private health care. The main results showed that job demands and leadership are the organizational antecedents more related to workplace bullying. Furthermore, the perception of colleagues has a moderating effect especially between job characteristics, like job demand, and negative acts, while this effect is weaker between relational antecedent, as leadership, and bullying. The data seem to confirm that mobbing prevention can be implemented starting from the psychosocial work environment and management of relationships involving leader and colleagues.

El presente estudio contribuye a la literatura sobre el modelo de demandas y recursos laborales en el contexto escolar italiano. El objetivo del artículo es examinar cómo la interacción entre el conflicto trabajo-familia (es decir, una típica demanda laboral), las oportunidades para aprender y desarrollarse, y la autoeficacia (es decir, recursos laborales y personales típicos, respectivamente) afectan a las dimensiones personales del burnout (agotamiento y despersonalización) y del involucramiento en el trabajo (vigor y dedicación). Las hipótesis fueron probadas con un diseño transversal con 143 maestros de escuela secundaria del norte de italia. los resultados del análisis de regresión múltiple moderada apoyaron hipótesis tales como que las oportunidades para aprender y desarrollarse son un amortiguador contra los efectos aversivos del conflicto trabajo-familia sobre la despersonalización, mientras que la autoeficacia modera la relación entre el conflicto trabajo-familia y el vigor. Desde un punto de vista práctico, nuestros hallazgos sugieren que las oportunidades para aprender y desarrollarse, y la autoeficacia son recursos importantes que ayudan a los maestros a reducir los efectos negativos relacionados con el conflicto trabajo-familia.

El objetivo del presente estudio es identificar cuáles son los factores psicosociales que se asocian a un mayor riesgo de acoso en los contextos laborales. En particular, en línea con la hipótesis situacional se tuvieron en cuenta la demanda laboral, el control, la percepción de equidad y el liderazgo. Específicamente se plantea una influencia directa de estos factores sobre las acciones negativas perpetradas en los lugares de trabajo y un efecto moderador de las percepciones de los colegas entre los factores considerados y el riesgo de acoso laboral. El estudio, llevado a cabo en una institución privada hospitalaria, incluyó la aplicación de un cuestionario de auto-reporte a todos los trabajadores de la organización (N = 148). Los resultados han evidenciado que son, sobre todo, la demanda laboral y el liderazgo los que influencian directamente las acciones negativas, mientras que el efecto es más débil entre los antecedentes de carácter más relacional, como el liderazgo, y el acoso laboral. Los datos confirman que la prevención del acoso laboral debe ser implementada a partir del ambiente psicosocial de trabajo y de la gestión de las relaciones que impliquen a los colegas y a los superiores.