Managers can ease job insecurity feelings in employees: Study

esearchers at Penn State, MacEwan University, and the University of Central Florida collaborated on a new study that examined how managers' active listening relates to their employees' sense of job insecurity during difficult times within companies. Managers' active listening can improve employees' sense of personal control over their careers and, thereby, reduce their anxiety about potential job loss.

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Job insecurity, the state of worrying about possible layoffs, can harm workers' well-being as much as actually being laid off. Worrying about layoffs can lead to chronic stress, and many studies have documented the harmful effects of stress, including sleep loss, poor eating, and higher blood pressure.

In the workplace, this stress leads to a decrease in job satisfaction, less adherence to safety behaviours, and poorer performance. When people face long-term job insecurity, their well-being decreases continually over time. Both employees and employers have many reasons for wanting to reduce the amount of time that employees suffer from job insecurity.

Unfortunately, when layoffs are imminent, managers often become withdrawn because they do not possess much more information about the future than their employees. However, there is something managers can do to support their employee's well-being. They can increase their active listening to employees' concerns. Active listening comprises three basic elements: attention, comprehension, and acceptance. The listener demonstrates careful attention to the speaker through body language.

—ANI