The relationship between job stress and health literacy with the quality of work life among Iranian industrial workers: The moderating role of social support Kumars Eisapareh 1 & Mahin Nazari 1 & Mohammad Hossein Kaveh 1 & Leila Ghahremani 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Job stress, including the influential factors on the health of employees and, reduces employee productivity. Inadequate health literacy has a negative effect on people’ s quality of life, and social support, can effect on stress and probably upgrade the quality of Work life (QWL). This study aimed to examine the relationship between job stress, health literacy and social support with the QWL in a steel plant in Dezful 2018. A cross-sectional analytic study, 418 steel plant workers were selected by a systematic random sampling. Data were collected by demographic characteristics, Walton’ s Quality of Work Life Questionnaire, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Health and Safety Executive Institute Job Stress Questionnaire, and Health Literacy Questionnaire, and were analyzed by spss using descriptive and inferential statistics. The relationship between job stress and QWL was significant (p < 0.001), but about health literacy and the QWL was insignificant (p = 0.756). The relationship between Social support with QWL was significant (p < 0.001), Job stress has a negative relationship with the QWL, and social support can reduce job stress and increasing their QWL. Keywords Quality of work life (QWL) . Job stress . Social support . Health literacy . Workers . Multiple regression analysis Introduction Stress, as the most important cause of physical, psychological and behavioral diseases of humans, has attracted the attention of many physicians, psychologists and management science scholars (Khosravi 2004 ; Nazari et al. 2018 ). The International Labor Organization (ILO) introduces job stress as the most recognized phenomenon of workers’ health threats, stating that stress occurs when there is no balance between job requirements and individual abilities (Lotfizadeh et al. 2011; Peter and Siegrist 2000). Job stress is a pattern of emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to undesirable aspects of the con- tent of work, organization and work environment (Meyer et al. 2004). There are four main reasons for organizations’ concern about job stress: general concern about employee health, the impact of health care expenditure, organizational effective- ness, and organizational effectiveness and legal compliance; organizations are most concerned about their monetary benefit (Yahaya et al. 2012). Job stress affects employees’ productiv- ity, performance, quantity, and quality of working life (QWL) (Yahaya et al. 2012). The results of a study in iran shows that poor psychological conditions in the workplace, such as high levels of job stress, have a negative effect on the QWL of workers (HR Mokarami et al. 2016). The QWL is one of the factors affecting employees’ moti- vation and organizational performance in the workplace (Ganesh and Paramasivam Ganesh 2014; Kanten and Sadullah 2012). job stress, can cause diseases such as cardio- vascular disease, gastrointestinal tract disease, musculoskele- tal pain and mental disorders, which affect the quality of life and, consequently, the QWL of individuals (Carayon et al. 1999). In addition, the results of numerous studies have shown that health literacy affects the general health status of people (Javadzade 2013)and the quality of life associated with health * Mahin Nazari manazari@sums.ac.ir Kumars Eisapareh Eisapareh@sums.ac.ir Mohammad Hossein Kaveh kaveh@sums.ac.ir Leila Ghahremani ghahramanl@sums.ac.ir 1 Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00782-5