Spirituality at Work: An Employee Stress Intervention for Academics?

Abstract

This study uses a spiritual appraisal model of stress and health to investigate the moderating effects of spirituality at work on job stress, wellbeing, and ill-being amongst Australian academics (Gall, Charbonneau, Clarke, Grant, Joseph & Shouldice 2005). Academic staff members employed in Australian universities completed a self-report questionnaire containing quantitative measures of spirituality at work (individual, work-unit and organisation wide spirituality), wellbeing, ill-being, job threat stress and job pressure stress (N = 139). Bivariate correlation analyses demonstrated that spirituality at work, wellbeing, ill-being and the job stress variables correlated moderately with each other. However, at the multivariate level, spirituality at work did not moderate the influence of job stress on either wellbeing or ill-being. Instead, job threat stress significantly predicted decreased wellbeing and increased ill-being. It was concluded that further exploration of spirituality at work is required to better understand potential benefits for organisations