Social support, job satisfaction, bullying, and harassment at work

Abstract

Well-being at work is essential for employees as they spend a significant amount of time at work. Well-being at work can affect all aspects of life and organizations’ output and the quality of the service provided. Various factors in the work environment can cause discomfort and lack of well-being at work. Bullying and harassment are considered to have a negative effect on employees and thus job satisfaction, but social support at work is considered a protective factor against negative factors in the work environment. The aim of this study is to examine social support at work among employees of Icelandic municipalities and its relationship to job satisfaction, bullying, and sexual and gender-based harassment. The study is based on an online survey from 2019. In total, 5,182 employees answered the questionnaire in part or in full after three reminders (54% response rate). The majority of participants in the study were women or 82%, but this gender ratio reflects the gender ratio of municipal employees. The results show that social support measured 4.1 on a scale of 1-5, higher among women than men. Job satisfaction was also measured at 4.1 and about 8% of employees had experienced bullying at work and about 2% sexual harassment and 2% gender-based harassment. The results also show that social support has a positive moderately strong correlation with employee job satisfaction and a negative weak correlation with bullying and gender-based harassment at work. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the social support is an important factor connected to job satisfaction and is a protective factor against bullying and harassment at work. It demonstrates that managers and those responsible for well-being in the workplace should focus on social support at work, especially now when the psychosocial work environment is fragile due to covid-19.