Eureka! Institutional Repository

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether the wellness services and especially the massage therapy can provide a beneficial outcome to work related stress management, to increase job satisfaction and the quality of working life. Also, it is crucial to investigate the impact and effectiveness of a wellness program at workplace. The significance of the particular research is high due to the fact that it will enrich the bibliography for the science of aestheticians and cosmetologists at Greece. It is the first time that a project like this has taken place, making the research unique and pioneering. Greece is a country with a great history and tradition in the use of health and wellness practices originated from the ancient years. The major economic crisis of the recent years, the increasing levels of unemployment and the instability in the political environment are some of the factors affecting employees all over Greece who tend to experience high levels of work related anxiety. Work anxiety, according to the international bibliography can be caused due to stressors at the working environment and usually is related to stress, depression, social alienation, behavioral change and reduced ability to work. Despite the fact, that there is a major interest on research at work-related anxieties worldwide, the research in Greece is limited and mainly focused in measuring only the work related stress at different occupations. In order to identify the suitable scientific publications, an extensive literature review was conducted in various scientific databases such as Pubmed, Google Scholar, Pubpsych, Science Direct, Scopus etc. The key words that were used are listed below at Table 1 in Greek and English terms. A wellness program was created with the use of massage therapy to employees and a variety of indicators were measured such as wellness, quality of working life, job satisfaction, work anxiety, pain, tension, fatigue, vigor and confusion. The provided massage therapy had a duration of 30 minutes and a specific therapeutic protocol was followed. The process of the experiment took place at the researcher’s beauty salon called “Beauty Time” at a special designed treatment room. The tools that were used for the specific research were the following: Perceived Wellness Survey (PWS), the World Health Organization Quality of life Assessment (EUROHISQOL), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), the State Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI) with the Greek adaption of Liako and Giannitsi, the Brief Pain Inventory (short) and vii Profile of Mood States (POMS). The SPSS n.21 statistical software was used to analyze the results of both the initial sample of employees and the sample eventually selected for the experiment and case tests.