The Effect of Skeletal-muscular Diseases on employees’ Tendency for Job Rotation, Considering the Mediating Role of Job Stress and the Moderating role of Mindfulness

In organizations, the emergence of some factors such as stressful conditions in the work environment, physical injuries and some other factors make employees decide to rotate their jobs. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of musculoskeletal diseases on employees’ desire to rotate their jobs, considering the mediating role of job stress and the moderating role of mindfulness in firefighters of the Ports and Maritime Administration of Iran.

This descriptive research is correlational type. The statistical population of the research was all the firefighters of the Ports and Maritime Administration of the whole country, whose number was 598. The sampling method in this research is cluster sampling method. The minimum number in sample in this research is 280 employees. The instruments of the present research are standard skeletal-muscular, mindfulness, job stress, and job rotation questionnaires. Convergent and divergent validity coefficients were used to check the validity of the questionnaires. The reliability of the questionnaires was calculated using Cronbach's alpha. In order to analyze the data, the structural equation modeling method of Smart PLS software was used.

The results showed that skeletal-muscular diseases have a positive effect on job stress. Skeletal-muscular diseases and job stress have positive effects on job rotation. Skeletal-muscular diseases have indirect effect on job r otation through job stress. Mindfulness moderates the effect of skeletal-muscular diseases on job stress.

 It can be concluded that skeletal-muscular diseases have an effect on the tendency of a individuals to rotate their jobs due to the role of job stress and mindfulness. Through this study It was confirmed that real physical pain can be reduced by mindfulness.