Workplace ethical climate and its relationship with depression, anxiety and stress

Background: Ethical climate in the workplace has been highlighted to have an important impact on workers' mental health; the evaluation of workplace ethics and its impact on workers' health should be considered an occupational health issue.

Aims: The present study aims to investigate ethical climate as perceived by workers, and its correlation with mental health outcomes, in particular, symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed by administering an online survey, investigating socio-demographic variables, workplace ethics (through the Italian short version of the Corporate Ethical Virtues questionnaire) and mental health outcomes (using the short version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale). Descriptive analyses, analyses of variance and regression models were performed; P-values were considered significant for values ≤0.05.

Results: The sample included 176 workers; the mean age of participants was 46.22 years and 44% were males. The most represented job sector was health care (37%), and 42% of participants had college-level education. Ethical climate was significantly correlated with all mental health outcomes investigated in the study: anxiety (P ≤ 0.001), depression (P ≤ 0.05) and stress (P ≤ 0.05).

Conclusions: Results from this study highlighted a significant correlation between workplace ethical climate and depression, anxiety and stress. This study underlines the importance of evaluating and improving ethical climate to prevent the onset of psychological distress in workers. Furthermore, results from this study should be a starting point for future research investigating the role of ethics and mental health in employees' turnover intention and job satisfaction.