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In industrialized countries, the turnover rate of preschool workers is extremely high and now represents a social problem. Consequently, it has become important to promote stable early care and educational environments for this population. Several factors related to working environments are known to affect turnover intention; however, the specific factors related to turnover intention among preschool workers have not yet been identified. Considering this, the objective of the present study was to determine factors associated with preschool workers' willingness to continue working.The participants of this study were 1137 preschool workers based in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the participants' data,with willingness to continue working for 5 years or more set as the dependent variable.Analysis of the results for all subjects clearly showed that male sex, older age, good mental health, high number of social supports, and good work engagement have a positive effect on willingness to continue working. Further, stratifying the participants in terms of age revealed that for preschool workers under 39 years, male sex,good mental health, high number of social supports, and good work engagement act positively in regard to willingness to continue working. Meanwhile, for those over 40 years, it was found that permanent employment and good work engagement act positively in this regard. Thus, work engagement was the only common factor between preschool workers under 39 and over 40.The findings of this cross-sectional study demonstrate that the factors associated with willingness to continue working among preschool workers differ between younger and older professionals. These findings underline the importance of considering age categories when attempting to maximize such professionals' willingness to continue working.

Copyright © 2016 American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. Objectives: This observational study aimed to determine how 1-year changes in work time control (WTC) have an impact upon objectively measured fatigue and sleep among employees. Methods: Thirty-nine employees were divided into two groups according to whether or not their WTC increased from baseline to 1 year later. Psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and wrist actigraphy were used to objectively measure fatigue and sleep, respectively. Self-reported outcomes were also measured. Results: The increased WTC group showed gradual improvements in PVT performance and sleep quality over the course of the follow-up period compared with the not-increased WTC group. Between-group differences were statistically significant for PVT lapses and tended to be significant for PVT speed after 1 year. Conclusions: A progressive increase in WTC could play a crucial role in reducing fatigue and promoting sleep among employees.

Background: Recently socioeconomic status (SES) and job stress index received more attention to affect mental health. Folate intake has been implicated to have negative association with depression. However, few studies were published for the evidence association together with the consideration of SES and job stress factors. The current study is a part of the Japanese study of Health, Occupation and Psychosocial factors related Equity (J-HOPE study) that focused on the association of social stratification and health and our objective was to clarify the association between folate intake and depressive symptoms in Japanese general workers.Methods: Subjects were 2266 workers in a Japanese nationwide company. SES and job stress factors were assessed by self-administered questionnaire. Folate intake was estimated by a validated, brief, self-administered diet history questionnaire. Depressive symptoms were measured by Kessler's K6 questionnaire. " Individuals with depressive symptoms" was defined as K6≧9 (in K6 score of 0-24 scoring system). Multiple logistic regression and linear regression model were used to evaluate the association between folate and depressive symptoms.Results: Several SES factors (proportion of management positions, years of continuous employment, and annual household income) and folate intake were found to be significantly lower in the subjects with depressive symptom (SES factors: p < 0.001; folate intake: P = 0.001). There was an inverse, independent linear association between K6 score and folate intake after adjusting for age, sex, job stress scores (job strains, worksite supports), and SES factors (p = 0.010). The impact of folate intake on the prevalence of depressive symptom by a multiple logistic model was (ORs[95% CI]: 0.813 [0.664-0.994]; P =0.044).Conclusions: Our cross-sectional study suggested an inverse, independent relation of energy-adjusted folate intake with depression score and prevalence of depressive symptoms in Japanese workers, together with the consideration of SES and job stress factors. © 2012 Miyaki et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Occupational health experts’ and practitioners’ evaluated systematic reviews of primary prevention measures for occupational mental health. A consensus meeting was held with the intent of developing primary prevention guidelines for mental health at work. Three preventive strategies were developed- improving the psychosocial work environment, self-care training, and supervisor training. For improving the psychosocial work environment, eight recommendations and four proposed items were developed across four domains. These four domains are planning and organization development, basic rules of implementation, proposals for effective improvement measures, and continued implementation. The guidelines for self-care training consist of four steps that coincide with the process of formulating and implementing measures to help individuals cope with stress (self-care) in the workplace. These four steps are planning and preparing, deciding what self-care entails, and making subsequent efforts. Six recommendations and four proposed items are provided for these four steps. The evidence-based guidelines for supervisor mental health training include ten recommendations and four proposed items. These guidelines recommend providing training to all supervisors, with a particular focus on high-priority populations, and on the needs and situation in the workplace. The training content should be tailored to the different management levels of supervisor groups but also provide basic information, such as explaining the national guidelines and the major occupational stress models. The training should aim to change supervisors’ behaviors and not just issue warnings. The guidelines also recommend providing supervisor training periodically (annually), because there is no evidence that the training effect lasts more than 6 months. We expect these guidelines to help to promote the adoption of evidence-based preventive strategies for the management of occupational mental health.

Background: The underlying mechanisms connecting work-aholism on the one hand and ill-health and performance on the other hand have to date hardly been examined empirically. Purpose: The aim was to study the mediating role of coping (i.e., active coping and emotional discharge) in the relationship between workaholism, ill-health (i.e., psychological distress and physical complaints), and job performance. Method: A theory-based model was tested among 757 employees of a Japanese construction machinery company. Results: Workaholism was positively related to active coping, which was, in its turn, negatively associated with ill-health and positively with job performance. Workaholism was also positively related to emotional discharge, which was positively associated with ill-health. In addition, workaholism was positively and directly related to ill-health, whereas it was not significantly related to job performance. Conclusion: Workaholism is associated with both active coping and emotional discharge. Active coping leads to better health and performance, whereas emotional discharge leads to poor health. In addition, workaholism coincides with poor health. Since the costs for workaholics themselves (in terms of ill-health) are high, workaholism has on average adverse effects on health and performance. © 2010 International Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Objectives: The present study examined how job demands affect an intimate partner's well-being. We hypothesized that job demands have a negative influence on partner well-being through the experience of work-family conflict (WFC) and an impaired quality of the relationship (reduced social support and increased social undermining towards the partner). Methods: The participants of this study were 99 couples of dual-earner parents in Japan. Results: Consistent with hypotheses, men's job demands (i.e. overload and emotional demands) were positively related to their own reports of WFC, and indirectly to women's ratings of men's WFC. Consequently, women's ratings of men's WFC were negatively related to the quality of the relationship (i.e. decreased social support from and increased social undermining by men), which, in turn, led to women's ill-health (i.e. depressive symptoms and physical complaints). We found similar findings for the model starting with women's job demands; gender did not affect the strength of the relationships in the model. Conclusions: These findings suggest that high job demands initiate a process of work-family conflict and poor relationship quality, which may eventually affect the intimate partner's well-being in an unfavorable way.

The possible associations of intragroup and intergroup conflict at work with psychological distress and work engagement were investigated in a cross-sectional study in a manufacturing factory in Japan. A self-administered questionnaire was sent to all employees, and 255 responses were returned (a response rate of 84%). Data from 247 workers (187 males and 60 females) with no missing values were analyzed. Intragroup and intergroup conflict at work, psychological distress, and work engagement were measured by the NIOSH-GJSQ, K6, and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9), respectively. An ANCOVA was conducted to compare K6 and UWES-9 scores among the tertiles on intragroup conflict or intergroup conflict scores, adjusting for demographic and occupational variables as well as worksite social support, separately for males and females. Intragroup conflict was associated with greater psychological distress for males (p for trend=0.009). Intergroup conflict was marginally significantly associated with psychological distress for both males and females (p for trend=0.050 and 0.051, respectively). Contrary to expectation, intergroup conflict was significantly associated with greater work engagement for females (p for trend=0.024). For males, intragroup and intergroup conflict at work may increase psychological distress; for females, intergroup conflict may increase both psychological distress and work engagement.

© 2018 Shimazu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Most studies report a positive relationship of work engagement with health and job performance, but, occasionally, a “dark side of engagement” has also been uncovered. The current study examined two hypotheses: whether work engagement has (1) a U-shaped curvilinear relation with psychological distress and (2) an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relation with job performance (i.e., in-role performance and creative behavior). A two-wave longitudinal Internet survey with a time lag of seven months was conducted among 1,967 Japanese employees. To test our hypotheses, we used a two-wave panel design and examined the lagged and concurrent relations between work engagement and both outcomes. The results confirmed that work engagement had a curvilinear relation with psychological distress concurrently; a favorable effect was found initially, but this disappeared at intermediate levels of work engagement, and, at higher levels, an adverse effect became prominent. In addition, work engagement had a curvilinear relation with in-role performance both concurrently and longitudinally; the higher the levels of work engagement, the stronger the favorable effects on in-role performance. However, contrary to our expectations, work engagement had a linear relation with psychological distress longitudinally and with creative behavior both concurrently and longitudinally. Hence, our results suggest that work engagement plays a different role in health enhancement compared to performance enhancement. Leveling-off and adverse effects of high work engagement were observed for psychological distress in the short and not in a long run. In contrast, no leveling-off effect of high work engagement was observed for job performance. Thus, except for the short-term effect on psychological distress, no dark side of work engagement was observed for psychological distress and job performance.

The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the empirical distinctiveness of workaholism and work engagement by examining their relationships with well-being in a sample of 776 Japanese employees. We expected that workaholism is associated with unwell-being (i.e., high psychological distress and physical complaints, low job and family satisfaction, and low job performance), whereas work engagement is associated with well-being. Well-validated questionnaires were used to measure workaholism (DUWAS), work engagement (UWES), and well-being (BJSQ, HPQ). Structural Equation Modeling showed that, as expected, workaholism was positively associated with ill-health (i.e., psychological distress and physical complaints) and negatively associated with life satisfaction (i.e., job and family satisfaction) and job performance. In contrast, work engagement was negatively associated with ill-health and positively associated with life satisfaction and job performance. These findings suggest that workaholism and work engagement are two different kinds of concepts, which are negatively and positively related to various indicators of well-being, respectively.

Background This study examined the association between traditional Japanese dietary pattern and depressive symptoms in Japanese workers, employing large-scale samples, considering socioeconomic status (SES) and job stress factors. Methods A cross-sectional study of 2266 Japanese employees aged 21-65 years from all areas of Japan was conducted as part of the Japanese Study of Health, Occupation and Psychosocial factors related Equity (J-HOPE). Habitual diet was assessed by FFQ (BDHQ). The depression degree and job stress factors (job demand, job control, and worksite support) were measured by K6 and Job Content Questionnaire. Results Participants with high scores for the balanced Japanese dietary pattern were significantly less likely to show probable mood/anxiety disorders (K6≥9) with multivariate adjustment including SES and job stress factors (odds ratio=0.66 [0.51-0.86], trend P=0.002). Other dietary patterns were not associated with depressive symptoms. Even after stratification by job stress factors, the Japanese dietary pattern was consistently protective against depressive symptoms. Furthermore, a highly significant difference between the first and third tertiles of the dietary pattern was observed in participants with active strain (high demand and high control) with low worksite supports (8.5 vs. 5.2, P=0.011). Limitations Female participant sample was relatively small. Conclusions Japanese dietary pattern consistently related to low depressive symptoms in this large-scale cohort of Japanese workers, even after adjusting for SES and job stress factors. The protective impact is especially strong for workers with active strain and low support. Making better use of traditional dietary patterns may facilitate reducing social disparities in mental health. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

This study examined the effects of active coping on job satisfaction in the context of the job demands-control-support model. Participants were 867 employees (811 men and 56 women, M age = 35.2 yr.) of a large electrical company in Japan. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis examined whether effects of active coping on job satisfaction might depend on the extent of coping resources, such as job control or social support (supervisor and coworker). Analysis showed that the effect of active coping on job satisfaction depended on the extent of coworkers' support, not on job control and supervisors' support.

© 2017 The Author(s). Background: Job crafting, an employee-initiated job design/redesign, has become important for employees' well-being. However, most studies on the relationship between job crafting and employees' well-being have been conducted in western countries; thus, it is unclear whether job crafting can be effectively applied to Asian cultures, such as Japan, which emphasizes group harmony. The aim of this study was to examine the cross-sectional associations of self-reported job crafting with work engagement and psychological distress among employees in Japan. Method: A questionnaire survey through the internet was conducted among all employees of a manufacturing company in Japan. We analyzed the data from 894 respondents, all employees with regular employment. Job crafting, work engagement, and psychological distress were assessed using the Japanese version of the Job Crafting Questionnaire, the Japanese version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), and the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ), respectively. Result: Hierarchical multiple regression showed that increasing structural job resources, social job resources, and challenging job demands was significantly and positively associated with work engagement (β = 0.31, p < 0.001; β = 0.14, p < 0.001; β = 0.36, p < 0.001, respectively). For psychological distress, increasing structural job resources was significantly and negatively associated with psychological distress (β = -0.15, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Our study suggests that increasing structural job resources is associated with higher work engagement and lower psychological distress. In addition, increasing social job resources and challenging job demands are also associated with higher work engagement.

Purpose Research on the prospective association of job demands and job resources with work engagement is still limited in Asian countries, such as Japan. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prospective association of job demands (i.e., psychological demands and extrinsic effort) and job resources (i.e., decision latitude, supervisor support, co-worker support, and extrinsic reward), based on the job demands-control (JD-C) [or demand-control-support (DCS)] model and the effortreward imbalance (ERI) model, with work engagement among Japanese employees. Methods The participants included 423 males and 672 females from five branches of a manufacturing company in Japan. Self-administered questionnaires, including the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ), the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (ERIQ), the nine-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9), and demographic characteristics, were administered at baseline (August 2009). At one-year follow-up (August 2010), the UWES-9 was used again to assess work engagement. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. Results After adjusting for demographic characteristics and work engagement at baseline, higher psychological demands and decision latitude were positively and significantly associated with greater work engagement at followup (b = 0.054, p = 0.020 for psychological demands and b = 0.061, p = 0.020 for decision latitude). Conclusions Having higher psychological demands and decision latitude may enhance work engagement among Japanese employees. © Springer-Verlag 2012.