Työilmapiiri, työntekijöiden hyvinvointi ja muutoksen mahdollisuus

Abstract

Työilmapiirin on osoitettu olevan yhteydessä henkilöstön hyvinvointiin, organisaation tuloksellisuuteen sekä henkilöstön ja asiakkaiden kokemaan palvelun laatuun. Maija Nakarin väitöstutkimuksen mukaan työn kuormittavuuden helpottaminen ei vähennä stressiä ja sairauspoissaoloja, ellei samalla huolehdita siitä, että työntekijä voi kokea työnsä kehittäväksi. Myös esimiehen tuki työilmapiirin kehittämisessä koetaan tärkeäksi.Julkisessa keskustelussa on nostettu esille työntekijöiden lisääntyneet sairauspoissaolot, työuupumus ja muu pahoinvointi. Hyvinvointiongelmia työssä voi olla kaikenikäisillä, joten niiden lähteitä on etsittävä myös työympäristöstä.

In the theoretical part of the study the concepts of organizational and work climateand well-being were discussed and the questionnaire used in the empirical partwas evaluated. The empirical study was based on a secondary analysis. The datawere collected from a social and health care organization with 2000 permanentemployees. About 80 % of them answered to a climate and stress inquiry everyyear from 1997 to 2001. The organization used the BSC approach (Kaplan & Norton1996), which involves the idea that work climate and the personnel’s well-being arecorrelated with organizational performance and client satisfaction. The mainresearch questions of the empirical study were: 1) was there any connectionbetween the organizational climate and the personnel’s well-being (the latter wasmeasured by self-evaluated sickness days and stress symptoms), 2) did the climatechange and the change in the personnel’s well-being correlate, and 3) did the workunits´ own development processes have any effect on the climate and well-being?The development processes studied used the results of the climate inquiry. Amodel was built from the theoretical frames of reference studied. The climate wasdefined as a person’s perceptions of his/her work environment. The data revealedseven climate factors, namely, interaction in the work unit, the superior’sfunctioning, work load, opportunity to develop at work, rewards, awareness ofaims and equality. The factors could be well placed in the model. The work climateand the personnel’s well-being correlated, and the opportunity to develop at workdecreased stress and sickness days. Support from superiors and co-workers,rewards and the feeling of equality also had an effect on well-being. The effects ofthese factors varied depending on four types of psychosocial work environment. Inthe units where the climate changed from 1997 to 2001, also well-being changed.The work units’ own development processes had an effect on the climate and well-being. The role of the superior was important. If the superior did not believe in theusefulness of the climate measurement, there were problems with the climate andwell-being in the unit. The work units that had proceeded with the developmentprocess were more likely to have a positive change in the work climate and thepersonnel’s well-being than work units that had not started this process at all orhad made little progress with it. The employees’ beliefs in future were moreoptimistic when their work unit had had a positive change in the climate and well-being than in the opposite case.