University of Texas at Austin

Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the stress, diseases, and disorders affecting employees due to workplace factors. It examines how an organization influences an employee's quality of work life and the subsequent psychological and behavioral responses. These reactions can extend beyond the workplace into an employee's personal life, an effect known as work-life spillover, particularly when work-life balance is poor. The field is informed by a wide range of research from medicine, biology, psychology, organizational studies, human factors, human resources, and industrial psychology. Its primary goal is to improve the health and well-being of individual workers, which in turn enhances the overall health of the organization.

Occupational Health Psychology

Sinclair, R. R., Graham, B., Kistler, L., Pool, M., Sperry, D., & Watson, G. P. (2023). Healthy Careers: An Occupational Health Psychology Perspective. In W. B. Walsh, L. Y. Flores, P. J. Hartung, & F. T. L. Leong (Eds.), Career Psychology: Models, Concepts, and Counseling for Meaningful Employment (pp. 591–616). American Psychological Association. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2w8kc01.32

Healthy Careers: An Occupational Health Psychology Perspective

**Categories of OHP**
-	Work-related stress and well-being
-	Job design and optimization
-	Occupational safety and health
-	Career development and work-life balance
-	Organizational interventions and well-being programs

OHP Categories

The Job Demands-Resources Model

The primary objective of Occupational Health Psychology is to enhance the complete health and well-being of individual employees. This focus on the individual is expected to lead to a secondary benefit: an improvement in the overall health and effectiveness of the organization as a whole.

Goal of Occupational Health Psychology

Occupational Health Psychology is a multidisciplinary field that integrates knowledge and research from a wide range of disciplines. Its foundations are built upon insights from medicine, biology, psychology, organizational studies, human factors, human resources, and industrial psychology.

Interdisciplinary Foundations of Occupational Health Psychology

Work-life spillover is a concept in Occupational Health Psychology describing how an employee's reactions to their job—whether positive or negative—are not confined to the workplace. These responses can extend into and influence their personal and family life, an effect that is often more pronounced when a healthy work-life balance is not maintained.

Work-Life Spillover

A large call center is experiencing high rates of employee turnover and increased use of sick days. Management is concerned about the situation. From the specific viewpoint of Occupational Health Psychology, which of the following questions would be the most critical to investigate to understand this problem?

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