Objective Literature reviews showed adverse effects of high job demands, low job control, and low social support at work on well-being in working populations. Other psychosocial work factors (PWFs) remain understudied in association with well-being. We aimed to examine the prospective associations of a large variety of PWFs and other occupational exposures with poor well-being, as evaluated by the WHO-5 well-being index. An additional objective was to explore the effects of multiple occupational exposures on this outcome.

Methods The study sample consisted of 15776 employees aged 15–65 years (9181 women, 8579 men) included in the representative sample of the French national survey on working conditions and followed up from 2013 to 2016. Participants were classified as having poor well-being if they had a WHO-5 score below 13. Occupational exposures included 20 PWFs which were studied separately and then grouped into five dimensions (work demands, work organization and job content, interpersonal relations and leadership, work-individual interface, workplace violence), 4 factors related to working time/hours, and 4 physico-chemical exposures. Weighted robust Poisson regression models were used to investigate the associations between occupational exposures in 2013 and incident poor well-being in 2016 after adjustment for covariates, in men and women separately.

Results The incidence rate of poor well-being in 2016 was 10.3% among men and 16.8% among women. Significant prospective associations were found between a wide range of PWFs and poor well-being, and the risk increased with the number of these factors globally and within almost all psychosocial dimensions (except work demands in men and workplace violence in both genders). Among the other studied occupational exposures, noise was prospectively associated with poor well-being in women.

Conclusion Working conditions, especially PWFs, could have a negative impact on well-being and exposure to multiple PWFs could increase the risk of poor well-being still further.