Organizational injustice and effort-reward imbalance: Relationships with stress biomarkers, sick leave days, and productivity

Organizational injustice (OIJ) and effort-reward imbalance (ERI) are two harmful workplace practices that undermine employee well-being. An explanation may be chronic stress, as measured by salivary stress biomarkers. This pilot study aimed to determine (a) the feasibility of credit union employees following a saliva collection schedule on workdays, and (b) preliminary effect sizes for relationships among OIJ, ERI, stress biomarkers (diurnal salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase secretion), employee health (sick leave days), and employee productivity. Thirty employees from three credit union worksites were sampled. OIJ, ERI, sick leave days, and productivity were measured by questionnaire. Ten standardized measures of the stress biomarkers were calculated. Regarding the saliva samples, 96% were returned with 88.2% to 100% collected within 15 min of scheduled times. Only 44.8% of participants demonstrated a cortisol awakening response on both days. Spearman’s rank correlations showed medium effect sizes among OIJ, ERI, and productivity (r ≥ .39). Measures of diurnal cortisol and alpha-amylase secretion did not significantly or meaningfully correlate with OIJ, ERI, sick leave days, or employee productivity. In conclusion, credit union employees proved a viable population to sample; however, awakening saliva specimen procedures needed reinforcing. While the effect size estimates may be imprecise and biased due to the small sample size, future studies should consider sample sizes that can detect small effect sizes.