Objectives: Workers in the financial services sector are exposed to great stress at work. This study investigates whether exposure to adverse psychosocial work conditions is independently associated with poor health-related physical and mental quality of life among financial services workers.
Methods: We studied a nationwide representative sample of 2,054 workers of a large Brazilian state bank in 2008. Adverse psychosocial work conditions were investigated by the Effort-reward imbalance (ERI) scale and the Job content questionnaire (JCQ). Health-related quality of life (HRQL) was assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form General Health Survey (SF-12). Poor mental and physical HRQL was defined by the lowest quartiles of the SF-12 final score distributions. Associations were investigated using multiple logistic regression analysis.
Results: In the multivariate analysis, exposures to low control and lack of social support at work (JCQ) were associated with poor HRQL in the physical domain. Increasing effort-reward imbalance and overcommitment (ERI), on the other hand, were associated with poor HRQL in the mental domain, with a significant statistical trend. Overcommitment was also associated with poor physical HRQL.
Conclusion: The results suggest that exposure to adverse psychosocial work conditions has a negative impact on both domains of HRQL among financial service workers. They also indicate that ERI and DC models capture different aspects of job strain.