Workplace rewards, positive interactions important for healthy well-being

OK, all you parents out there. How many times have you heard your child cry, “It’s not fair!” in response to the latest pronouncement you have just made? Pronouncements like, “Your sister gets to do (whatever) because she’s in high school and you’re still in kindergarten!” And how many times have you replied (even though you swore you’d never repeat the words your mother said to you), “Who told you life was going to be fair?”

But deep in your heart, you always wanted life to be fair, and it was a hard lesson you learned, once you found out there was unfairness all around you. Justice (or fairness) is a fundamental human value. Until now, no one has studied the effect of perceived workplace injustice on health. Researchers with the Whitehall II Study of British civil servants, a large-scale, ongoing prospective study, have done just that, and their results were published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine. They looked at perceived justice in the workplace and its relationship to coronary heart disease.

A prospective study means that the study participants are studied over time, so data is collected as it is happening, rather than looking back and trying to collect results in retrospect. (The data are more reliable when they are collected prospectively.) The Whitehall II study participants were office workers based in London, aged 35 to 55 years, who worked in 20 civil service departments. The study was divided into two phases: Phase 1 was from 1985-1988, and phase 2 was from 1989-1990. For this particular study, the researchers looked at 6,442 men who had no history of coronary heart disease at the end of phase 2 and followed them through 1999.

The researchers used a self-reported justice scale, which included the following questions related to the workplace: (1) Do you ever get criticized unfairly? (2) Do you get consistent information from your supervisor? (3) Do you get sufficient information from your supervisor? (4) How often is your superior willing to listen to your problems? and (5) Do you ever get praised for your work? Participants responded during phase 1 and again during phase 2. All the participants were divided into three groups based on their scores: low justice, intermediate justice and high justice.

The incidence of coronary heart disease was defined as a heart-disease death, a first nonfatal heart attack, or angina. Here’s where having a national health care system can be really helpful. Participants were flagged at the National Health Service Central Registry, which provided information about the cause and date of death for those in the study who died.

The researchers also took into account other factors known to affect the risk of heart disease including age, ethnicity, cholesterol level, obesity, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity. They found that independent of those risk factors, the men who perceived a high level of justice in their workplace were about 30 percent less likely to develop heart disease in the follow-up period than those in the intermediate and low justice groups.

Employees are highly dependent on their supervisors for resources and rewards. Studies have shown that these interactions can be important for wellbeing. Employees who believe that their supervisor considers their viewpoints, shares information concerning decision making, and treats employees fairly and truthfully perceive a higher level of justice in their workplace. The same authors have found that these employees are more highly motivated, more cooperative and less likely to be absent from work.

Of course the study has its limitations. First of all, only men were included because there were too few cardiac events among the women in Whitehall II to be statistically significant. So we don’t know if the findings apply to women.

Still, it’s an intriguing study. Employers who treat their employees fairly have a healthier workforce, with fewer absences and presumably more productivity. Employees lower their risk of heart disease. Sounds like a classic win-win situation to me.