From Conflicting Outcomes to Mutual Losses: How Punitive Responses to Problematic Substance Use Suppress Help‐Seeking and Cause Harm

ABSTRACT Problematic substance use (PSU) is a significant, inadequately managed people management challenge. Drawing on the conflicting outcomes and mutual losses perspectives on HRM and employee wellbeing, and using Job Demands‐Resources theory to explain underlying strain‐driven loss cycles, we examine factors shaping PSU and help‐seeking among 575 midwives during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We make three contributions to HRM theory and practice that collectively extend beyond HR practices to develop a broader, multi‐level framing of HRM in wellbeing research, attentive to peers, managers and stakeholders beyond the organisation. First, empirically, we find that, for committed professionals, PSU emerges as a coping response and individual regulatory strategy to maintain functioning given excessive job demands (work stress, traumatic incidents, insufficient recovery) and inadequate job resources; HR systems should treat PSU as a health and wellbeing issue, addressing root causes rather than defaulting to sanction. Second, conceptually, ostensibly supportive resources (e.g., supervisor support, co‐worker relationships, organisational policy) can operate as illusory resources, reach tipping points and lose protective value, or constrain help‐seeking; HR wellbeing interventions must evaluate whether resources function as intended and how to enable uptake. Third, theoretically, our focus on PSU as a health‐related form of wellbeing advances the under‐developed mutual losses perspective, showing how conflicting outcomes may transition to mutual losses. We evidence how punitive HR enactment together with managerial, co‐worker and supra‐organisational dynamics (public expectations, regulatory reporting) converge to suppress help‐seeking and shape loss spirals; HR should act and advocate to dismantle punitive norms and build psychosocial environments that enable help‐seeking.