Psychological wellbeing of govt staff at medium level, survey shows

 

The Public Services Department says employees whose personal scores fall within the medium range need improvements with regard to some elements in their lifestyles. (File pic)

PETALING JAYA: A Public Services Department (JPA) survey has found that the psychological wellbeing of government employees is at the medium level, according to the department’s website.

The online survey, in which more than 755,000 employees took part, posed 35 questions covering six areas of personal and professional lives.

The average score was 6.5 over 10, which JPA has classified as being in the medium category.

The overall wellbeing was measured according to the averages of positive emotion (7.59), negative emotion (4.54), life satisfaction (6.55), social wellbeing (6.87), functional psychology (7.96), and worker engagement (4.6).

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JPA said employees whose personal scores fell within the medium range needed improvements with regard to some elements in their lifestyles.

“The employees in this classification are advised to discuss their shortcomings with their officer in charge of psychology to improve their wellbeing.”

Those classified as “high” in their scores are said to have exemplary lifestyles and excellent psychological wellbeing,

Those in the “low” category have been advised to contact their psychological officers to make their lives more meaningful in order to be more positive and productive.

In their self-assessment, the government employees had to rate themselves from zero to 10.

Questions to rate their positive and negative moods included those asking whether they were happy, cheerful and relaxed or depressed, sad and troubled.

Questions in the other areas included those aimed at cognitive assessment of their quality of life according to global judgments on subjects relevant to them.

These also touched on their self-acceptance level, ability to administer their daily duties, whether they had positive relationships and whether they had aims in life.

The employees were also asked about their interaction with society in terms of contributions to their communities and awareness of happenings.

JPA’s psychological division said the objective of the survey was to measure the psychological wellbeing index of civil servants to be used as an indicator to draw up and implement development and intervention policies.

It urged the civil servants to answer the questions honestly and sincerely, assuring them their answers were confidential and used only for research purposes. - FMT