An Alpha, Beta and Gamma Approach to Evaluating Occupational Health Organizational Interventions: Learning from the Measurement of Work-Family Conflict Change.

Unlabelled: Given the rapid growth of intervention research in the occupational health sciences and related fields (e.g. work-family), we propose that occupational health scientists adopt an "alpha, beta, gamma" change approach when evaluating intervention efficacy.

Work Schedule Patching in Health Care: Exploring Implementation Approaches.

The authors propose a typology of "work schedule patching," the ongoing adjustments made to plug scheduling holes after employers post schedules. Patching occurs due to changes in employer demands, or employee demands necessitating scheduling adjustments, which are reactive or proactive. Using qualitative data from eight health-care facilities, the authors identified three narratives justifying schedule patching implementation approaches (share-the-pain, work-life-needs, and reverse-status-rotation) with variation in formalization and improvisation.

Boundary Management Permeability and Relationship Satisfaction in Dual-Earner Couples: The Asymmetrical Gender Effect.

Given the increasing use of technology and the growing blurring of the boundaries between the work and nonwork domains, decisions about when to interrupt work for family and vice versa can have critical implications for relationship satisfaction within dual-earner couples. Using a sample of 104 dual-earner couples wherein one of the partners is a member of the largest Italian smartphone-user community, this study examines how variation in boundary management permeability within dual-earner couples relates to partner relationship satisfaction, and whether the effect differed by gender and partners' agreement on caregiving roles in the family. Using actor-partner analysis, we examined the degree to which an individual and his or her partner's level of family-interrupting work behaviors (FIWB, e.

Sustaining sleep: Results from the randomized controlled work, family, and health study.

Although calls for intervention designs are numerous within the organizational literature and increasing efforts are being made to conduct rigorous randomized controlled trials, existing studies have rarely evaluated the long-term sustainability of workplace health intervention outcomes, or mechanisms of this process. This is especially the case with regard to objective and subjective sleep outcomes. We hypothesized that a work-family intervention would increase both self-reported and objective actigraphic measures of sleep quantity and sleep quality at 6 and 18 months post-baseline in a sample of information technology workers from a U.

Lasting Impression: Transformational Leadership and Family Supportive Supervision as Resources for Well-being and Performance.

Although evidence is growing in the occupational health field that supervisors are a critical influence on subordinates' reports of family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), our understanding is limited regarding the antecedents of employee's FSSB perceptions and their lagged effects on future health and work outcomes. Drawing on a positive job resource perspective, we argue that supervisors who report that they use transformational leadership (TL) styles are more likely to have subordinates with higher FSSB perceptions. We theorize that these enhanced perceptions of work-family specific support increase access to personal and social resources (objectively and subjectively) that buffer work-nonwork demands and enhance health (mental, physical) and job outcomes (performance appraisal ratings, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, work-family conflict).

Caring for the elderly at work and home: Can a randomized organizational intervention improve psychological health?

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 compared with 511 caregivers in 15 control facilities at 4 measurement times: preintervention and 6, 12, and 18 months.

When Mothers' Work Matters for Youths' Daily Time Use: Implications of Evening and Weekend Shifts.

Drawing upon the work-home resources model, this study examined the implications of mothers' evening and weekend shifts for youths' time with mother, alone, and hanging out with peers unsupervised, with attention to both the amount and day-to-day consistency of time use. Data came from 173 mothers who worked in the long-term care industry and their youths who provided daily diaries. Multilevel modeling revealed that youths whose mothers worked more evening shifts on average spent less time with their mothers compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer evening shifts.

The Effects of a Cluster Randomized Controlled Workplace Intervention on Sleep and Work-Family Conflict Outcomes in an Extended Care Setting.

Objectives: To evaluate the effects of a workplace-based intervention on actigraphic and self-reported sleep outcomes in an extended care setting.

Design: Cluster randomized trial.

Setting: Extended-care (nursing) facilities.

Bidirectional, Temporal Associations of Sleep with Positive Events, Affect, and Stressors in Daily Life Across a Week.

Background: Sleep is intricately tied to emotional well-being, yet little is known about the reciprocal links between sleep and psychosocial experiences in the context of daily life.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to evaluate daily psychosocial experiences (positive and negative affect, positive events, and stressors) as predictors of same-night sleep quality and duration, in addition to the reversed associations of nightly sleep predicting next-day experiences.

Methods: Daily experiences and self-reported sleep were assessed via telephone interviews for eight consecutive evenings in two replicate samples of US employees (131 higher-income professionals and 181 lower-income hourly workers).

The Family Time Squeeze: Perceived Family Time Adequacy Buffers Work Strain in Certified Nursing Assistants With Multiple Caregiving Roles.

Purpose Of The Study: This study examined how certified nursing assistants (CNAs) with unpaid family caregiving roles for children ("double-duty-child caregivers"), older adults ("double-duty-elder caregivers"), and both children and older adults ("triple-duty caregivers") differed from their nonfamily caregiving counterparts ("workplace-only caregivers") on four work strain indicators (emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and work climate for family sacrifices). The moderating effects of perceived family time adequacy were also evaluated.

Design And Methods: Regression analyses were conducted on survey data from 972 CNAs working in U.

Filling the Holes: Work Schedulers as Job Crafters of Employment Practice in Long-Term Health Care.

Although work schedulers serve an organizational role influencing decisions about balancing conflicting stakeholder interests over schedules and staffing, scheduling has primarily been described as an objective activity or individual job characteristic. The authors use the lens of job crafting to examine how schedulers in 26 health care facilities enact their roles as they "fill holes" to schedule workers. Qualitative analysis of interview data suggests that schedulers expand their formal scope and influence to meet their interpretations of how to manage stakeholders (employers, workers, and patients).

Intervention effects on safety compliance and citizenship behaviors: Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Study.

We tested the effects of a work-family intervention on employee reports of safety compliance and organizational citizenship behaviors in 30 health care facilities using a group-randomized trial. Based on conservation of resources theory and the work-home resources model, we hypothesized that implementing a work-family intervention aimed at increasing contextual resources via supervisor support for work and family, and employee control over work time, would lead to improved personal resources and increased employee performance on the job in the form of self-reported safety compliance and organizational citizenship behaviors. Multilevel analyses used survey data from 1,524 employees at baseline and at 6-month and 12-month postintervention follow-ups.

IS WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT A MULTILEVEL STRESSOR LINKING JOB CONDITIONS TO MENTAL HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM THE WORK, FAMILY AND HEALTH NETWORK.

Purpose: Most research on the work conditions and family responsibilities associated with work-family conflict and other measures of mental health uses the individual employee as the unit of analysis. We argue that work conditions are both individual psychosocial assessments and objective characteristics of the proximal work environment, necessitating multilevel analyses of both individual- and team-level work conditions on mental health.

Methodology/approach: This study uses multilevel data on 748 high-tech professionals in 120 teams to investigate relationships between team- and individual-level job conditions, work-family conflict, and four mental health outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, perceived stress, and psychological distress).

Day-to-day inconsistency in parent knowledge: links with youth health and parents' stress.

Purpose: Considerable evidence documents the linkages between higher levels of parental knowledge about youth activities and positive youth outcomes. This study investigated how day-to-day inconsistency in parental knowledge of youth activities was linked to youth behavioral, psychological, and physical health and parents' stress.

Methods: Participants were employees in the Information Technology Division of a Fortune 500 company and their children (N = 129, mean age of youth = 13.

Work-family conflict, family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and sleep outcomes.

Although critical to health and well-being, relatively little research has been conducted in the organizational literature on linkages between the work-family interface and sleep. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we use a sample of 623 information technology workers to examine the relationships between work-family conflict, family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and sleep quality and quantity. Validated wrist actigraphy methods were used to collect objective sleep quality and quantity data over a 1 week period of time, and survey methods were used to collect information on self-reported work-family conflict, FSSB, and sleep quality and quantity.

Designing Work, Family & Health Organizational Change Initiatives.

For decades, leaders and scholars have been advocating change efforts to improve work-life relationships. Yet most initiatives have lacked rigor and not been developed using scientific principles. This has created an evidence gap for employer support of work and personal life as a win-win for productivity and employees' well-being.

Measurement development and validation of the Family Supportive Supervisor Behavior Short-Form (FSSB-SF).

Recently, scholars have demonstrated the importance of Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSB), defined as behaviors exhibited by supervisors that are supportive of employees' family roles, in relation to health, well-being, and organizational outcomes. FSSB was originally conceptualized as a multidimensional, superordinate construct with four subordinate dimensions assessed with 14 items: emotional support, instrumental support, role modeling behaviors, and creative work-family management. Retaining one item from each dimension, two studies were conducted to support the development and use of a new FSSB-Short Form (FSSB-SF).

Innovative Ideas on How Work-Family Research Can Have More Impact.

The commentaries on our focal article agreed with its main premise that work-family research should follow new strategies to improve its practical impact, and made suggestions clustering into three main themes. The first theme built on our suggestion to improve the research focus, terminology, and framing of work-family research. These essays offered additional ideas such as decoupling work-family from work-life research, and examining contextual factors more deeply.

How Work-Family Research Can Finally Have an Impact in Organizations.

Although work-family research has mushroomed over the past several decades, an implementation gap persists in putting work-family research into practice. Because of this, work-family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted. The goal of this article is to clarify areas where implementation gaps between work-family research and practice are prevalent, discuss the importance of reducing these gaps, and make the case that both better and different research should be conducted.

WORKPLACE SOCIAL SUPPORT AND WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT: A META-ANALYSIS CLARIFYING THE INFLUENCE OF GENERAL AND WORK-FAMILY-SPECIFIC SUPERVISOR AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT.

This article uses meta-analysis to develop a model integrating research on relationships between employee perceptions of general and work-family-specific supervisor and organizational support and work-family conflict. Drawing on 115 samples from 85 studies comprising 72,507 employees, we compared the relative influence of 4 types of workplace social support to work-family conflict: perceived organizational support (POS); supervisor support; perceived organizational work-family support, also known as family-supportive organizational perceptions (FSOP); and supervisor work-family support. Results show work-family-specific constructs of supervisor support and organization support are more strongly related to work-family conflict than general supervisor support and organization support, respectively.

Clarifying work-family intervention processes: the roles of work-family conflict and family-supportive supervisor behaviors.

Drawing on a conceptual model integrating research on training, work–family interventions, and social support, we conducted a quasi-experimental field study to assess the impact of a supervisor training and self-monitoring intervention designed to increase supervisors' use of family-supportive supervisor behaviors. Pre- and postintervention surveys were completed, 9 months apart, by 239 employees at 6 intervention (N = 117) and 6 control (N = 122) grocery store sites. Thirty-nine supervisors in the 6 intervention sites received the training consisting of 1 hr of self-paced computer-based training, 1 hr of face-to-face group training, followed by instructions for behavioral self-monitoring (recording the frequency of supportive behaviors) to facilitate on-the-job transfer.

Work-life initiatives and organizational change: Overcoming mixed messages to move from the margin to the mainstream.

This article examines perspectives on employer work-life initiatives as potential organizational change phenomena. Work-life initiatives address two main organizational challenges: structural (flexible job design, human resource policies) and cultural (supportive supervisors, climate) factors. While work-life initiatives serve a purpose in highlighting the need for organizational adaptation to changing relationships between work, family, and personal life, we argue they usually are marginalized rather than mainstreamed into organizational systems.