Work Environment Stressors - The link between employees’ well-being and job performance?

Abstract: Background: Employees are the human capital which contributes to the success and de-velopment of a company to a great extent. Thus, these days, companies do not see them only as factors of production from the classical perspective, but have started to value them as stakeholders and partners with whom long-term goals are achieved together. Problem Discussion & Purpose: Researchers realized the need of companies to deal with employees, and for that reason, there has been great time and effort spent on studies con-cerning the relation between job satisfaction and job performance. However, the authors of the thesis came to conclusion that the link between job satisfaction and job performance was still a vague one. Therefore, the thesis is focused on the concept of well-being. The study concentrates on blue-collar workers, and the purpose is to explore and understand the relation between job-related well-being and employees’ job performance in the context of stress caused by following environmental factors: working tools, workload, heat, noise, and safety. Theoretical Framework: The theories used for this study are concerning job perform-ance, well-being, and stress. An emphasis is given on the work environmental stressors, which are working tools, workload, safety, heat, and noise. Methodology: To make this study, the researchers applied qualitative approach and used 8 semi-structured interviews to collect the data. The authors have conducted personal “face-to-face” interviews. All of them were tape-recorded to provide the maximum accuracy of received data. Information was gathered within one company. Conclusion: After conducting research, acquiring empirical findings, and making analysis of data, the thesis authors suggest that there is a link between job performance and job-related well-being via the work environment stressors. The authors of the thesis assume that probably the relationship between well-being and performance can look as a “circle-” or “spiral”-like model, where well-being and performance influence each other mutually, however, in different ways at different stages of the model. The influence of well-being on job performance via researched work environment stressors can be either direct or indirect. The study is of a great importance because it gives good insight of seeing well-being as a link to performance which previously was not done by any other research. Being aware of the influence of the environmental factors, managers can better realize how these factors contribute to the performance and well-being of their employees, and find ways how to improve working environment in order to increase workers’ job performance and job-related well-being.