Invited Paper: Psychosocial Risks at Work and Employee Wellbeing: the role of Coaching Psychology interventions in the promotion of Flourishing Workplaces
Prof Maria João Gouveia with Marcela Almeida Alves with Prof Stephen Palmer
Positive Occupational Health Psychology is a relatively new approach in the area of Occupational Health Psychology, inspired in Positive Psychology movement, that emphasizes the importance of promoting health and wellbeing at the workplace rather than only preventing or managing stress. PERMA model is a theoretical reference, in Positive Psychology, to understand psychological health or flourishing. It is a multidimensional condition of high levels of: Positive Emotions (P), Engagement (E), Relationships (R), Meaning (M) and Accomplishment (A). Positive Coaching Psychology interventions at workplaces, based on PERMA model, could contribute to the improvement of employee wellbeing and health. A sample of 60 employees of a technology company in Portugal (M = 43,7 years old; 70% of men) answered the Portuguese version of Workplace PERMA Profiler and the Portuguese medium version of COPSOQ-II. The aim of this study is to analyze the correlations between Wellbeing factors and Psychosocial Risks at Work. As expected, the results show significant correlations, positive and negative, between COPSOQ-II factors, PERMA dimensions and Overall Wellbeing. It can be concluded the relevance of mixed intervention models which address both healthy and unhealthy factors. As the results were obtained cross-sectionally, they cannot sustain a protective role of Wellbeing in Psychosocial Risks at work, but this is a question to be clarified in the future in longitudinal or intervention studies.
Prof Maria João Gouveia is a Professor of Psychology at ISPA-Instituto Universitário /Applied Psychology Research Center-Capabilities and Inclusion – (APPSY-CI).