LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Burnout and stress were at an all-time high across professions at the start of the year, according to the American Psycological Association. New research done in Kentucky shows scientific evidence of biological links between workplace culture and human health.
23-year-old Daniel Cruse knows what it’s like to experience a negative or toxic work environment. He’s happy in his current job, but it wasn’t always the case.
Cruse explained to Spectrum News 1 his negative experiences started early. He said, “Especially in high school. I had a lot of work experiences where there were just a lot of disrespect from employers and kind of like neglect of the workers not really caring about what they needed or wanted at the job to keep them happy or keep them wanting to work. That could make it really difficult to be excited at all about having to go into work every day.”
Scott Kiefer also knows a lot about toxic work environments. He is retired now, but for almost 18 years as an Executive Coach, he used to help CEOs understand and identify what some toxic work environments are and how to implement strategies to make it more engaging for employees. He says many times, toxicity can be really hard to see and get people to acknowledge, but there are signs — like being quick-to-anger.
“They’re overly frustrated by what may be normal working environments." Kiefer explained to Spectrum News 1. "They want to assume control or take back control because again, the toxicity where I feel like I’ve lost control. People try to take it back so that might be some micromanagement.”
University of Louisville professor and lead researcher on the study, Dr. Brad Shuck, says the objective was to understand the work/health connection. What does it mean for our lives when our work impacts our health in physiological ways?
“The magnitude of what we found was surprising and how connected and what a risk factor your work culture can be for the long-term risk you have for developing chronic disease states later in life.” Dr. Brad Schuck explained.
The findings are published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
“What we found is that when people feel like they belong, they are a part of a work culture that includes them, that their risk for long-term chronic disease goes down. But, when they’re in places where they feel isolated, or they feel alone or they feel ignored, that their risk for long-term chronic disease goes up and that’s directly connected to how it feels to work someplace. To be in a place where culture is positive.” Dr. Shuk explained.
“I believe it.” Cruse said. He has not read the study, but offered his thoughts. “I think mental health is also a huge factor too. I think physical and mental health are tied together.
The study is believed to be the first to connect biomarkers for chronic disease risk factors, like employee capacity for work assigned, stress and workplace physical and social environment. Dr. Rachel Keith is a study co-author.
“We were collecting biological samples and looking at different health outcomes. One of them is the catecholamine that we looked at here. That can be a risk factor for things like heart disease, it can make your heart beat faster. It can cause your blood vessels to get smaller. It can do other things to your body that would put you at risk for disease long term. It can be good in small doses, but it’s bad when it happens over and over for long periods of time.” Dr. Rachel Keith, a co-author of the study, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville.
To do the study, researchers collected urine samples and gave participants a survey about their work environment
“What’s interesting in this project, is that we were able to take those questions people answered about the culture and look at work exposure or our work environment in a way that was different. And by linking those two, we were able to do this really powerful study to show health effects of a workplace environment that is a traditional outcome you would normally look at like a repetitive motion injury.” Dr. Keith explained.
Shuck says he hopes very real conversations about how important work culture is, happens.
“This is a first-of-its-kind study where we have been able to marry up and match biological data with actual survey data. We hope that we can continue to expand this research throughout the state looking at different populations, looking at different industries and really come up with models that are impacting organizations very positively.” Dr. Shuck explained.
Kiefer has read though the research. The implications, he says, could be a win-win.
“I think we need to change the narrative to say if talent and employees are so important to the success of your organization, then we have to invest in them as a person. Above and beyond just job training, skills training, we need to invest in them, in their health, so that they show up at work, that they feel good about what they’re doing and we have long-term employees. That’s a win-win for both employers and employees.” Kiefer explained.
Dr. Shuck said this is a hopeful conversation about optimism.
Dr. Shuck said they want to continue this academic and clinical research at UofL. He also said they want to be as inclusive as they possibly can and continue to tell the story about how work is impacting health.