The impacts of leadership behaviours on the mental well-being of public safety communicators
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Public safety (communicators; e.g. 9-1-1, police, fire and ambulance call-takers and dispatchers), like many other public safety personnel (e.g. police, paramedics), (re)suffer operational stress injuries (OSIs) that are too often hidden and at a prevalence higher than the general population. Unfortunately, there are very little data for OSI rates in Canadian communicators. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the only pan-Canadian study focusing on organizational culture, and its potential influence on OSIs, within the communicator context. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a 179-item online survey of Canadian communicators comprising 17 validated screenings for occupational stress injuries and symptoms and four open-ended questions relating to their agency's organizational culture. The authors thematically analysed participants' open-ended responses and their screening scores. Findings A semi-grounded thematic approach revealed that managers and supervisors were significant contributors to negative perceptions (n = 165) of organizational culture, potentially resulting in or worsening existing OSIs. Specifically, leadership was viewed as ineffective, inconsistent, unsupportive, abusive and toxic, with limited understanding of communicator roles. Communicators described feeling devalued, particularly when leaders fail to recognize communicator OSIs, which can perpetuate stigma. Conversely, positive leaders (n = 24) were described as supportive, communicative and encouraging. Originality/value The findings suggest that while leadership behaviours are a key factor in employee well-being, it varies considerably across agencies, impacting treatment-seeking behaviours. The authors’ new understandings of leaders' roles in OSIs may help reduce the frequency and severity of communicator OSIs, helping ensure that emergency services are delivered to Canadians.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".