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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1416609
This article is part of the Research Topic The Interplay of Stress, Health, and Well-being: Unraveling the Psychological and Physiological Processes - Volume II View all 35 articles

Non-support from the immediate boss is associated with stress and unsafety at work

Provisionally accepted
Åshild Olsen Faresjö Åshild Olsen Faresjö 1*Elvar Theodorsson Elvar Theodorsson 1Michael Jones Michael Jones 2Fredrik Iredahl Fredrik Iredahl 1Tomas Faresjo Tomas Faresjo 1
  • 1 Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
  • 2 Michael Jones, Sydney, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Work-related complaints are often caused by stress and increased mental strain. Support from your immediate boss and colleagues is crucial to buffer against the negative health effects of the psychosocial working environment.The aim of this study was to investigate if support from the immediate boss and colleagues was associated with biological stress levels, unsafety at work, and other workrelated conditions.Methods: Data derives from a subsample of the SCAPIS study, a major Swedish prospective population-based study. In this subsample, a total of N= 5 058 middle-aged persons (50-64 years) from the general population participated; of these, 68.4% (n= 3 462 individuals) provided hair samples. Questionnaires included sociodemographic and self-reports of occupation, stress, and health status. The demand and control questionnaires were used. A biomarker of long-term stress, hair cortisol concentrations (HCC), was also applied.In this studied cohort, 9.1 % reported a lack of support from their immediate boss, while 90.9% reported that they did get support at work. Significantly more women (p<0.001) reported non-support. Those with support or not did not differ in terms of age, education, civil status, smoking, or ethnicity. Those with non-support reported a higher extent (p<0.001) of lower perceived health. The risk for hypertension and high cholesterol was increased by 28 %, respectively, 13 % being in the non-support group. The main findings were associations between lack of support and feelings of unsafety at work (p<0.001), higher long-term cortisol levels (p<0.009), lack of support from colleagues (p<0.001), and feelings of dejected/sad (p<0.001) and high work pace (p=0.03).Individuals who did not have the necessary support from their immediate boss and colleagues reported they felt more insecure at work and had higher biological long-term stress. In workplace health promotion, an awareness of the link between social support at work and health could be an important component.

    Keywords: Working conditions, support at work, Middle-aged population, job-strain, Biological Stress, perceived stress

    Received: 12 Apr 2024; Accepted: 20 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Olsen Faresjö, Theodorsson, Jones, Iredahl and Faresjo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Åshild Olsen Faresjö, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

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