The Determinants Of Human Wellbeing In Professional Activities

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of person’s attitude towards success in his professional activities, which are the value of human labor and his wellbeing in professioanl activity. Personal attitude and substantial components of socio-psychological factors of attitude development provides the field of welfare of the employee. It focuses on the implementation of efficient technologies of formation attitude towards success in the process of training and retraining. The object of the research was the OJSC Evrazruda candidate pool members studying at the Evraz Siberia Regional Staff Training Center, as well as a group of experts (engineer, metallurgists). The techniques of V.K. Gerbachevsky, V.V. Stolin, S.R. Panteleyev, H.J. Eysenck, M. Rokeach, N.M. Peysakhov and J. Rotter were used in the research. The study showed the interconnection of a person’s attitude with the dominant features of the component structure of motivational, volitional and self-consciousness factors. They are the determinants of wellbeing and quality of life in professional activity.

Keywords: Person’s attitudesuccesswellbeingmotivational factorvolitional factorself-consciousness factor

Introduction

The driving force of the society development is a creative, motivated toward succeed, socially active person. Professional activity provides him with the basic needs gratification, support by family and loved once, the experience of pleasure from the process of labor, welfare, and the corresponding quality of life, etc. The dynamic processes in all spheres of life are reflected on the wellbeing and attitudes of each person.

Welfare can be attributed to both the personal traits and mental conditions. In assessing the experienced human emotions and feelings (the affective component of wellbeing) wellbeing stands as a condition or as a personality disposition. Professional sphere of activity defines a system of semantic entities, relations, formation of the personality attitudes, which determine the wellbeing and quality of life of the subject. Professional wellbeing includes a cognitive component (thoughts, judgments, comparisons, attributions, relations), provides positive functioning, positive emotions, perception of the value and purpose of working activities, self-realization.

Human wellbeing depends on assessment of the quality of his life, separate spheres of his life (professional activities, hobbies, etc.) or one specific circumstance (financial reward satisfaction, relationship), and etc.

Factors of wellbeing should be considered the social and psychological, material, spiritual, invariable circumstances of life, short-term situations promoting satisfaction of actual requirements and realization of life strategies, professional self-determination. It is necessary to refer attitudes, personal characteristics which make active the subject on self-development, long productive functioning in professional activity and advancing the subject to wellbeing to such factors.

Attitude of a person towards success is an internal marker, value of the person in a working process, defines meaning of life, the professional status, self-assessment, and relation to work. Thereby it determines satisfaction, trust to himself, self-efficiency, orientation to the future, personal growth, normalization of social wellbeing, self-realization. As a whole these signs define professional and personal wellbeing, success of the person.

Professional and personal wellbeing depends on type of sets and attitudes of the person and social and psychological factors of their formation. These points make us pay attention to studying questions of a real condition of the marked problem directly in the frame of training and retraining process of specialists.

Research Methodology

To conduct the study, we compiled a complex of psychodiagnostic methods including the following: assessment of the level of claims by Gerbachevsky V.K. (Krylov, & Manichev, 2003), the technique of self-attitude study by Stolin V.V. and Panteleyev S.R. (Stolin, 1987), the Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1964.), the Rokeach Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973), self-management ability (Peysakhov, n.d.), the Locus of Control (Rotter, 1954). We also used the method of multivariate statistics which increased the validity of the results, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences "SPSS 22.0".

The study involved 53 OJSC Evrazruda candidate pool members, trainees of the Evraz Siberia Regional Staff Training Center. They represent various technical professions (installers of machinery and equipment in machining, smelters, steelmakers, blast furnace workers, control station operators, mechanics). The control group was 19 experts: engineers, metallurgists of the West Siberian Metallurgical Combine. The study was carried out according to the scheme X1OR, wherein X is the impact of the diagnostic snapshot; O is the snapshot; R is the name of the group (Gottsdanker, 1978; Gorbunova, 2005). We used the serial (nested) sample type with an account of the respondents’ professional orientation and level of training. The experiment lasted three months, from October to December, 2015; the results were processed and interpreted from January to March, 2016.

Discussion and results

We developed theoretical generalized models of social-psychological factors which allowed us to study the interconnection of the experts’ personal attitude towards success of the dynamic, static and variable types with the content components of social-psychological factors: motivational, volitional and self-consciousness (Konyukhova, Konyukhova, & Shevtsov, 2008).

The results of the diagnostic snapshot were processed by factor analysis, thus creating expert aim-oriented profiles which grouped the essential features of the factors under study.

The results showed that changes in the structure of the core features impact the content of the information fields (cognitive, conative, affective) of the attitude towards success in the groups of experts with the dynamic, static and variable types of the attitude.

The allocated factor structures show the internal statistically significant connections of the variable fields of social-psychological factors. The analysis of the interrelations of the indicators of the motivational factor revealed significant correlation dependencies within the field of structural components. The correlation intersections of the data display the connection of motives: cognition (.650), result importance and consistency (.596), effort mobilization (.622), initiative (.647) and others. Generalized constructs of the factor components provide a person with motivation and attitude awareness (cognitive-motivational component), motivation to independent and productive activities (conative-motivational component) with a corresponding emotional attitude (affective-motivational component).

Correlation dependencies within the field of structural components of the volitional factor indicate the interconnections of all the indicators of this factor. Experts with the attitudes of the dynamic, static and variable types show dependencies between social value orientations and necessary professionally significant volitional qualities: a developed ability of self-organizing (.635), the dominant features of a holistic self-management cycle, voluntary behavior (.578), which determines the development of an attitude towards success. Structural components of the volitional factor and their features function as directed activities of a person; they are considered in conjunction with the fields of the attitude [9]. According to experts, the ability to negotiate and correct the behavior and activities ensures the stability of the attitude towards success.

At the level of developed self-consciousness, a person uses a system of internal tools, attitudes, knowledge of oneself, relationships which create the field of success in professional activities. Correlation analysis of expert aim-oriented profiles found interconnection of features in the structurally stable field of the self-consciousness factor components for experts with all types of the attitude towards success. Significant connections were identified in the following indicators: integrated scale (.653), expecting a positive attitude towards oneself (.595), self-esteem (.592), self-leadership (.756), properties of the typological features and terminal values. The revealed correlation dependencies emphasize the importance of the self-consciousness factor features when assessing and selecting the strategy of a person’s success in professional activities.

Mutual internal connection of dominants (** p≤ 0.01 and * p ≤ 0.05), formed by the features of all social-psychological factors, confirms their structural integrity; the identified interconnections in the components indicate the superposition of the core of the integrated complex of features. The synergistic effect of the structural components of the fields of social-psychological factors determines the contribution of the experts’ attitude towards success to the content of the cognitive, conative and affective fields.

Regression analysis found the interconnection of the features of the structural components of the motivational factor field and the nature of the experts’ dynamic, static and variable attitudes, which allows predicting the influence of statistically significant (** p≤0.01 and * p ≤ 0.05) features on the attitude towards success of the trainees in their future professional activities.

The results extend the existing characteristics of the subjects of professional activities with an attitude towards success. Trainees with a positive attitude towards success are motivated to take initiative, achieve a certain status, develop a career, improve professional activities, realize their potential in work, have a high level of subjective control, features of self-management and values, which reflects the internally managed system of a person’s state and resource mobilization. In the psychic organization of the component structure of self-consciousness people seek to develop personally important features of self-attitude, self-knowledge, self-reflection, activity, environment, which manifests itself in the focused creation of the conditions of their social-psychological well-being, mental health, satisfaction and self-esteem.

The study showed that trainees with the dynamic attitude towards success make greater contribution to the field of motivational success than trainees with the variable and static attitudes. This fact characterizes such experts as "capable of objectification and ready to switch to objectified aims" (Uznadze, 1966, p. 281), able to actively restructure their motivational readiness in the direction of success and wellbeing in professional activity.

The study found that trainees with the variable attitude towards success have greater volitional success than trainees with the dynamic and static attitudes. This field is represented by the features of self-organization, persistence in decision-making, analysis of the situation, self-management, willpower and others.

The established interconnections of the structural component features of the self-consciousness factor indicate greater reflexive success of trainees with the dynamic and variable attitudes. Trainees with the static attitude have dominant conative and reflective components, indicating their hyper-objectivation, attitude impulse delays, consciousness and lack of recklessness in choosing types of their activities.

Conclusion

The study showed the integrative complexes of features of all social-psychological factors which determine the development of a person’s attitude towards success in professional activities. This attitude supports the wellbeing of a specialist. The group of the trainees experimentally showed interconnections of features in the component structure of social-psychological factors (motivational, volitional and self-consciousness factors); their contribution to the cognitive, conative, affective fields of the attitude was determined. The established features of the interconnection of the social-psychological factors and attitudes of the experts are interpreted as potential for the development of the dominant features in the educational space of training a modern professional in the corresponding labor field as well as for the creation of conditions for the development of a person’s success, sutisfaction of work, wellbeing in social and professional activities.

Coaching as a method and the technology of training and development, preservation and/or growth of subjective wellbeing of the person of work (Passmore, & Anagnos, 2009) and concrete motivational interviewing-based health coaching becomes the actual directions of improvement of professional wellbeing; use of information and communication technologies of change by the subject the behaviour in the sphere of activity and motivation of creation of conditions of wellbeing.

The results are the basis of creation of social and psychological support model of trainees, development and implementation of organizational programs of formation attitude toward success in the sphere of work, thereby providing them success, wellbeing in professional activity.

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