A recent study from Iran highlights that job security and fairness are more critical than stress relief in enhancing productivity among non-faculty staff at a medical sciences university. Published in BMC Health Services Research, the findings urge organizations to shift their focus on how to effectively boost employee performance.
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Conducted by researchers Samira Alirezaei and Moloud Miahi, the study examined the interconnections among job stress, job security, and organizational justice concerning the productivity of administrative and support personnel. These employees are vital to the functioning of academic medical institutions, yet they are often neglected in workplace studies that prioritize other roles like physicians or academics.
Between October 2025 and March 2026, the researchers surveyed 215 non-faculty employees through simple random sampling to ensure unbiased representation. Participants completed validated questionnaires that assessed job stress using the Health and Safety Executive Management Standards Indicator Tool, along with measures for job security, organizational justice, and self-reported productivity. The study received ethics approval from Saveh University of Medical Sciences, with all participants providing written consent.
The analysis revealed robust correlations: productivity increased significantly with job security (correlation coefficient of 0.674) and organizational justice (0.671), both statistically significant. Conversely, job stress correlated negatively, suggesting employees feeling less stressed also reported higher productivity.
When applying hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis, organizational justice emerged as the strongest independent predictor of productivity, with a beta coefficient of 0.381, followed by job security at 0.355. Job stress, however, showed negligible relevance with a beta of just 0.037, indicating that once fairness and security were accounted for, stress lost its impact.
The authors suggest that perceived stress may stem more from structural issues than being a direct cause of productivity loss. Effective interventions may need to prioritize improving fairness and job security over direct stress management techniques. This aligns with the notion that organizational justice—encompassing distribution, procedure, and interactional fairness—plays a vital role, especially in contexts like universities where administrative staff may feel undervalued.
Job security has gained particular importance amid current economic uncertainties affecting many institutions. Employees concerned about their positions may disengage from meaningful work, diverting their focus instead toward job searching. Conversely, a sense of security allows individuals to dedicate more cognitive and emotional resources to their roles, thereby enhancing productivity.
The study acknowledges some limitations, including its cross-sectional design which cannot establish causation, as well as its sample being limited to a single Iranian institution. The authors advocate for multicenter studies to verify if these findings apply universally across different contexts. Despite these limitations, the study strongly indicates that to foster higher productivity, organizations must invest in building fair decision-making processes and ensuring job security, rather than solely implementing stress relief measures.