Psychosocial work strains and well-being in the process of adapting to occupational stress: longitudinal studies of offshore rig workers

Abstract

background The work on offshore rigs is related to a number of physical and mental burdens. The subject matter of the paper refers to the assessment of the relation between the mode of adapting to occupational stress and the feeling of wellbeing among the employees of offshore rigs in Poland. participants and procedure The research procedure is a longitudinal study and encompasses analysis of data between 1993 and 2014. 167 employees of the Polish offshore rigs were studied: all of them were male and the average age was 42. Measuring tools were used to assess the subjective occupational stress, psychosocial work conditions, evaluation of physical and mental well-being and styles of coping with stress. results The perceived level of stress directly affects mental wellbeing (r = .19, p = .048): the higher the level of stress, the worse is the mental well-being (β = -.30). In a considerable part, the dependence between occupational stress and mental well-being may be clarified by the impact of the style of coping with occupational stress and the rate of stress dynamics (r = .32, p = .004). The higher the share of task-oriented coping style as compared to the emotion and avoidance-oriented style, the higher is the self-reported mental well-being. The higher the probability of affiliation with the group reporting a decrease in stress, the higher is the self-reported mental well-being. Perceiving stress has no direct or indirect impact on physical well-being (β =. 09; β = .08; β = -.11). conclusions A dependence exists between the process of adapting to stress and the level of the self-reported mental well-being of the rig employees. The higher the probability of adaptation to the difficult situation at work in a way that the self-reported stress is reduced, the higher the self-reported mental well-being. Perceiving stress bears no direct or indirect impact on the physical well-being.