Many aspects of change in the workplace effect employees, both professionally and personally. For many individuals, workplace settings are more than job locations or venues in which they earn their livelihoods. Workplaces often represent complex social environments in which workers may or may not realize their vocational and personal goals. For some, workplaces are the principal setting in which they feel competent and effective. In this way, workplaces play an important role in identity and self-esteem regulation.

Conversely, for others, workplaces are a source of ongoing stress and conflict; they represent a daily threat and challenge to the worker's sense of efficacy and fragile self-esteem.

Organizational change, subtle or overt, can often exert a marked impact on workers. Workplace change can be experienced by workers as a threat to their psychological integrity and physical well-being as much as any other significant stress in their family or personal lives can induce these concerns.

This workshop will provide participants with an indepth understanding of how workplace change - downsizing, takeovers, expansion, corporate shake-ups, closures, mergers, etc. - impacts on worker health and well-being.

The learning objectives of this workshop are to recognize the ways in which organizational changes effect workers. While change is inevitable in a complex world, its negative effect on workers is not an inevitability.