Adverse psychosocial working conditions and poor quality of life among financial service employees in Brazil.

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.