Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Workplace Motivation: Addressing Telework As A Mechanism For Maintaining Employee Productivity, Kaitlyn Fujii

University Honors Theses

This research seeks to identify social and psychological factors that affect satisfaction levels of employees. The thesis suggests teleworking as a renewed tool for communicating and executing work in organizations; and moreover, demonstrating how telework systems can motivate millennial and gen-z workers to be productive. The main factors identified for said analysis have been determined through the study of business and academic literature about workplace culture and how it is changing. Such research investigated the differences between baby boomers, millennials and gen-zs, and furthermore how providing employees with the option to participate in telework may enhance their output. To make …

An Examination Of Daily Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors, Perceived Supervisor Responsiveness And Job Satisfaction, Luke Daniel Mahoney

Dissertations and Theses

Balancing both work and non-work life is increasingly recognized as a challenge for employees, and supervisors are in a position to support employees in their efforts to do so. Supervisors who exhibit family-supportive behaviors in support of employees who juggle work and family roles show benefits for employees in terms of well-being and job outcomes. The purpose of this study was to take a more fine-grained look at family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) using daily surveys in order to advance understanding of how family-supportive behaviors work within-person. Another aim of the study was to examine perceived supervisor responsiveness (PSR) for the …

Recruitment Marketing: How Do Wellness And Work-Life Benefits Influence Employer Image Perceptions, Organizational Attraction, And Job Pursuit Intentions?, Amy Christine Pytlovany

Dissertations and Theses

A global talent shortage is motivating employers to change the way they approach recruitment. To stay competitive, business leaders are strategizing new ways to attract employees and market their organizations to prospective employees. This research examined the impact of work-life and wellness programs on employer image perceptions (instrumental, symbolic, and experiential) and recruitment outcomes (organizational attraction and job pursuit intentions). It integrated these literatures to inform evidence-based organizational decision-making.

Study materials were developed with pilot testing conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Pilot 1 (N = 40) assessed the value of 32 types of benefits across traditional (e.g., health …

Caring For The Elderly At Work And Home: Can A Randomized Organizational Intervention Improve Psychological Health?, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Rebecca J. Thompson, Katie M. Lawson, Todd Bodner, Matthew B. Perrigino, Leslie B. Hammer, Orfeu M. Buxton, David M. Almeida, Phyllis Moen, David Hurtado, Bradley Wipfli, Lisa Berkman, Jeremy W. Bray

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although job stress models suggest that changing the work social environment to increase job resources improves psychological health, many intervention studies have weak designs and overlook influences of family caregiving demands. We tested the effects of an organizational intervention designed to increase supervisor social support for work and nonwork roles, and job control in a results-oriented work environment on the stress and psychological distress of health care employees who care for the elderly, while simultaneously considering their own family caregiving responsibilities. Using a group-randomized organizational field trial with an intent-to-treat design, 420 caregivers in 15 intervention extended-care nursing facilities were …

Building Resources At Home And At Work: Day-Level Relationships Between Job Crafting, Recovery Experiences, And Work Engagement, Allison Marie Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

Work engagement is an increasingly popular construct in organizational and occupational health psychology. However, despite substantial advances in our understanding of work engagement at the between-person level, scholars have argued for increased investigation into what drives engagement on a daily level for individual employees. In the current study, a within-person, day-level design was employed to examine the relationships between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors, and daily work engagement. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (Hobfoll, 1989) theory, nonwork mastery experiences and job crafting were operationalized as employee-driven, resource-building strategies that assist employees in generating important psychological and job resources that …

A Marathon, Not A Sprint: The Benefits Of Taking Time To Recover From Work Demands, Charlotte Fritz, Allison Marie Ellis

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

“Are you binge working?” was the title of a recent NBC News article14 de-scribing recent cases in which people reported working as many as three days straight without any breaks, and in some cases literally dying as a result. Although cases like these are extreme, they point to a growing trend in today’s workplace—one that suggests employees are working longer hours, coping with increasing work demands, and readily adopting technology that tethers them to their work 24/7. Coupled with a working culture that equates face time and being “always on” with high job com-mitment, we’re left—perhaps not surprisingly—with a workforce …

Examining The Mechanisms Of The Work-Nonwork Boundary Fit And Health Relationship, Jenna Risa Lecomte-Hinely

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the construct of work-nonwork boundary fit, or the congruence between an individual's work-nonwork boundary management preferences and the work-nonwork boundary management policies and practices supplied by their employer. The present study used boundary theory and person-environment (P-E) fit theory to propose that high levels of work-nonwork boundary fit would be beneficial to mental and physical health, both directly and indirectly via the dual mechanisms of conflict and enhancement. Survey methods and latent congruence modeling (LCM) were used to test these hypotheses, which were then supplemented by polynomial regression response surface mapping and qualitative analysis. Results showed that …

Designing Work, Family & Health Organizational Change Initiatives, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Leslie B. Hammer, Erin L. Kelly, Phyllis Moen

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we describe the development of the most comprehensive work-family organizational change initiative to date in the United States. Our goal is to share an in-depth case study with examples and critical lessons that emerged. We draw on our years of experience working with major employers from two industries representative of today’s workforce (health care and IT professionals). Employers and applied researchers can draw on this study and lessons to create, customize, and deliver evidence-based interventions to improve work, family and health.

A Macroergonomics Approach Examining The Relationship Between Work-Family Conflict And Employee Safety, Lauren Ann Murphy

Dissertations and Theses

In 2008, there were more than 5,200 workplace fatalities in the United States. During the same time period, U.S. employees missed almost 1.1 million days from work. Accidents are unexpected outcomes that result not only from individuals' behaviors, but from contextual factors. Therefore, unsafe behaviors have to be interpreted according to a combination of what is occurring in the environment and what the individual is doing in that environment. The present study sought to create a more comprehensive model of safety by means of macroergonomics. Macroergonomics utilizes sociotechnical systems theory to posit that a work system is composed of a …

Workplace Cognitive Failure As A Mediator Between Work-Family Conflict And Safety Performance, Rachel Jane Daniels

Dissertations and Theses

The main goal of this thesis was to examine the effects of family-to-work conflict on safety performance. Data were collected from a sample of 134 employees, consisting primarily of construction workers. Results found that levels of conflict from the family role to the work role negatively affected participants' workplace cognitive failure, or cognitively based errors that occur during the performance of a task that the person is normally successful in executing. Workplace cognitive failure, in turn, was a significant predictor of levels ofsafety performance, both employees' compliance with safety procedures and the extent to which they participated in discretionary safety-related …