ABSTRACT
Research and practice concerning employee health management has disproportionately focused on identifying and eradicating physical and psychological hazards linked with ill-health and poor performance. This is especially evident within criminal justice occupations, where concerns such as bullying, stress, and burnout have been particularly dominant (Brough and Biggs, 2010). This negative focus is unsurprising, given the tangible threat posed to the well-being of employees within high-stress criminal justice environments (Botha and Pienaar, 2006; Lambert et al., 2008; Neveu, 2007). Recently, this negative focus has shifted, as positive psychology concepts focusing on building human strengths and positive states have become more influential in criminal justice research. This has unquestionably provided a more balanced perspective of health, placing ‘equal importance on the precursors and outcomes of both the negative and positive states present within the work environment’ (Burney, 2011, p. 1).
