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Given that millions of employees switched to mandatory telework during COVID-19, and as teleworking practices are likely to continue, it is essential to understand the potential impact of mandatory and non-flexible teleworking practices on employee well-being. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory, we find support for resource gains as increase in job control mediates the link between increases in teleworking and improvements in well-being (increases in work engagement and decreases in burnout and job boredom). Conversely, the findings indicate resource losses as loss of social support and higher work-non-work interference explain the deterioration in well-being for those whose teleworking increased since the COVID-19 outbreak. By coupling role depletion and role enrichment theories, we find that employees who had children living at home experienced greater work-non-work interference due to increased teleworking. However, having children also buffered the negative impact of work-non-work interference on well-being. The findings are based on a Finnish population sample collected three months before and after the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 (N = 996 of matched respondents) and latent change score analyses of within-person changes. Our results provide new insights regarding the potential impact of teleworking on employee well-being in a context where teleworking is not flexible and self-selected by the employees. Notably, our results draw bridges (rather than burn them) between role depletion and enrichment frameworks as having children may simultaneously be “a burden” and “a gift”.

AbstractThe United Nations’ World Happiness Report has ranked Finland as the happiest country for three consecutive years. In this research, we employed thematic analysis to analyze Instagram posts (N = 650) tagged with the hashtag “#happy” produced by Finnish-speaking users (#onnellinen in Finnish) during 2018, the first year that Finland gained the title of happiest country.We found that the representations of happiness constructed on Instagram included seven shared and distinguishable themes: Social relationships, Physical appearance, Free Time, Nature, Success, Pets and Material Things. Drawing from the social representations theory approach, the results revealed a multi-layered structure of the representations of happiness organized around three dichotomies: social–individual, relaxing–pursuing and immaterial–material, which were anchored to ideas of “gratitude” (toward something or someone) and “pride” (toward the self). The dichotomy “self-oriented/other-oriented” was interpreted to constitute the themata (underlying structure) of the emerging social representation of happiness.The paper contributes to the research of everyday knowledge by demonstrating how understandings related to happiness are shaped on Instagram, as well as by proposing a possible strategy for exploring the construction of everyday understandings of different societal issues employing new communication technology platforms containing both visual and textual elements.

There is no consensus on whether burnout constitutes a depressive condition or an original entity requiring specific medical and legal recognition. In this study, we examined burnout–depression overlap using 14 samples of individuals from various countries and occupational domains ( N = 12,417). Meta-analytically pooled disattenuated correlations indicated (a) that exhaustion—burnout’s core—is more closely associated with depressive symptoms than with the other putative dimensions of burnout (detachment and efficacy) and (b) that the exhaustion–depression association is problematically strong from a discriminant validity standpoint ( r = .80). The overlap of burnout’s core dimension with depression was further illuminated in 14 exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analyses. Given their consistency across countries, languages, occupations, measures, and methods, our results offer a solid base of evidence in support of the view that burnout problematically overlaps with depression. We conclude by outlining avenues of research that depart from the use of the burnout construct.

Objective: A consensual definition of occupational burnout is currently lacking. We aimed to harmonize the definition of occupational burnout as a health outcome in medical research and reach a consensus on this definition within the Network on the Coordination and Harmonisation of European Occupational Cohorts (OMEGA-NET). Methods: First, we performed a systematic review in MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Embase (January 1990 to August 2018) and a semantic analysis of the available definitions. We used the definitions of burnout and burnout-related concepts from the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) to formulate a consistent harmonized definition of the concept. Second, we sought to obtain the Delphi consensus on the proposed definition. Results: We identified 88 unique definitions of burnout and assigned each of them to 1 of the 11 original definitions. The semantic analysis yielded a first proposal, further reformulated according to SNOMED-CT and the panelists` comments as follows: "In a worker, occupational burnout or occupational physical AND emotional exhaustion state is an exhaustion due to prolonged exposure to work-related problems". A panel of 50 experts (researchers and healthcare professionals with an interest for occupational burnout) reached consensus on this proposal at the second round of the Delphi, with 82% of experts agreeing on it. Conclusion: This study resulted in a harmonized definition of occupational burnout approved by experts from 29 countries within OMEGA-NET. Future research should address the reproducibility of the Delphi consensus in a larger panel of experts, representing more countries, and examine the practicability of the definition. This study was supported by the University of Lausanne and European Cooperation in Science and Technology, Action CA 16216 "Network on the Coordination and Harmonisation of European Occupational Cohorts” (OMEGA-NET). info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In this study, we provide insights on how servant leadership may promote employee performance. We investigate whether the associations between increases in servant leadership and employees’ task and adaptive performance are mediated by changes in the two antipodes of employee well-being: work engagement and burnout. We utilized a two-wave survey data ( N = 2453) collected from 34 organizations and latent change score modeling as an analytical approach to examine associations among within-person changes. Our findings showed that increased perceptions of servant leadership were associated with increases in work engagement and decreases in burnout. Increases in work engagement were associated with increases in task performance and four subfacets of adaptive performance (i.e., stress management, reactivity, creativity, and interpersonal adaptivity). Decreases in burnout were associated with increases in task performance. Our findings suggest that improved servant leadership practices may foster employees’ task and adaptive performance especially through the promotion of work engagement. JEL CLASSIFICATION: L200 Firm Objectives, Organization, Behavior: General

Compassion is in high demand within organizational research, with important implications for leadership, well-being, and productivity. However, thus far only meditation-based interventions have been implemented to increase compassion in organizations. Our aim was to explore whether compassion could be increased among managers through improving their emotional skills. We implemented a quasi-randomized controlled trial with pre-test and post-test design of a new emotional skills cultivation training among managers, measuring the treatment group (N = 68), the control group (N = 90), and their followers (N = 85 and N = 72). Compared to the control group, the managers exhibited significantly increased sense of emotional skills, with some evidence for an improved sense of compassion. We also found that emotional skills mediated the impact of participating in the intervention group and compassion. Additionally, servant leadership behaviors in the intervention group improved following the intervention. These results demonstrate that instead of being something innate, compassion is a skill that can be increased through training emotional skills, with observable benefits for the organization.

Background Identifying the most significant risk factors for physician burnout can help to define the priority areas for burnout prevention. However, not much is known about the relative importance of these risk factors. Aims This study was aimed to examine the relative importance of multiple work-related psychosocial factors in predicting burnout dimensions among physicians. Methods In a cross-sectional sample of 2423 Finnish physicians, dominance analysis was used to estimate the proportionate contribution of psychosocial factors to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. The psychosocial factors included job demands (time pressure, patient-related stress, lack of support, stress related to information systems, work–family conflict) and job resources (job control, team climate, organizational justice). Results Together, psychosocial factors explained 50% of the variance in emotional exhaustion, 24% in depersonalization and 11% in reduced professional efficacy. Time pressure was the most important predictor of emotional exhaustion (change in total variance explained ΔR2 = 45%), and patient-related stress was the most important predictor of both depersonalization (ΔR2 = 52%) and reduced professional accomplishment (ΔR2 = 23%). Stress related to information systems was the least important predictor of the burnout dimensions (ΔR2 = 1–2%). Conclusions Psychosocial factors in physicians’ work are differently associated with the dimensions of burnout. Among the factors, the most significant correlates of burnout are job demands in the form of time pressure and patient-related stress.

The current study introduces an ultra-short, 3-item version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Using five national samples from Finland (N = 22,117), Japan (N = 1,968), the Netherlands (N = 38,278), Belgium/Flanders (N = 5,062), and Spain (N = 10,040) its internal consistency and factorial validity vis-à-vis validated measures of burnout, workaholism, and job boredom are demonstrated. Moreover, the UWES-3 shares 86–92% of its variance with the longer nine-item version and the pattern of correlations of both versions with 9 indicators of well-being, 8 job demands, 10 job resources, and 6 outcomes is highly similar with an average, absolute difference between correlations of only .02. Hence, it is concluded that the UWES-3 is a reliable and valid indicator of work engagement that can be used as an alternative to the longer version, for instance in national and international epidemiological surveys on employee’s working conditions. ispartof: European Journal of Psychological Assessment vol:35 issue:4 pages:577-591 status: published

Job resources are known to be key drivers of work engagement, but surprisingly, little is known about the relative importance of specific job resources in comparison to one another. We investigated the relative importance of eight job resources both cross-sectionally and over a 3-year time period. We hypothesized that job resources at the task level are “universally” important and contribute relatively more to work engagement than other types of job resources. We employed dominance analyses to a large cross-sectional data set ( N = 11,468 from 87 organizations), focusing specifically on 11 jobs, and to a two-wave data set ( N = 2,334). Three job resources emerged as the most important both for concurrent and future work engagement across the jobs and samples: skill discretion, job feedback, and team empowerment. Practically, this study suggests that interventions to enhance work engagement could focus on increasing skill discretion and job feedback and on building team empowerment. JEL: L200 Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has changed work life profoundly and concerns regarding the mental well-being of employees’ have arisen. Organizations have made rapid digital advancements and have started to use new collaborative tools such as social media platforms overnight. OBJECTIVE Our study aimed to investigate how professional social media communication has affected work engagement before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of perceived social support, task resources, and psychological distress as predictors and moderators of work engagement. METHODS Nationally representative longitudinal survey data were collected in 2019-2020, and 965 respondents participated in all 4 surveys. Measures included work engagement, perceived social support and task resources, and psychological distress. The data were analyzed using a hybrid linear regression model. RESULTS Work engagement remained stable and only decreased in autumn 2020. Within-person changes in social media communication at work, social support, task resources, and psychological distress were all associated with work engagement. The negative association between psychological distress and work engagement was stronger in autumn 2020 than before the COVID-19 outbreak. CONCLUSIONS The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted pressure on mental health at work. Fostering social support and task resources at work is important in maintaining work engagement. Social media communication could help maintain a supportive work environment.

Work engagement is expected to result from job resources such as autonomy. However, previous results have yielded that the autonomy–work engagement relationship is not always particularly strong. Whereas previous longitudinal studies have examined this relationship as an average at a specific point in time, this study examined whether this relationship is different within individuals from one time to another over the years. Furthermore, experiences of work engagement are expected to affect how employees benefit from autonomy, but no studies have so far investigated whether the initial level of work engagement affects the autonomy–work engagement relationship. This study aimed to first identify the different kinds of longitudinal relationship patterns between autonomy and work engagement, and then to investigate whether the identified relationship patterns differ in terms of the initial mean level of work engagement. The four-wave study was conducted among Finnish managers (n = 329) over a period of six years. Multilevel regression mixture analysis identified five relationship patterns. Four of the patterns showed a positive predictive relationship between autonomy and work engagement. However, the relationship was statistically significant in only one of these patterns. Furthermore, when the initial mean level of work engagement was high, autonomy related more strongly to work engagement. However, an atypical pattern was identified that showed a negative association between autonomy and work engagement. In this pattern, the mean level of work engagement was low. Consequently, autonomy may not always enhance work engagement; sometimes this relationship may even be negative.

Despite ample interest in the potential consequences of work engagement over the last two decades, the question of whether work engagement predicts proximal and more distal career-related outcomes has gained surprisingly little attention. Using Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and a sustainable careers framework, the aim of this study was to investigate whether work engagement predicts register-based outcomes of wages, moves in occupational rankings, unemployment, and disability pensions. We used nationally representative survey data (n = 4876, response rate 68.7%) on Finnish employees derived from the Quality of Work Life Survey (QWLS) and matched respondent data to the Finnish Longitudinal Employer–Employee Data (FLEED), which covered the period 2013–2015. We utilized ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variable (IV) estimations to strengthen causality in the analyses. Even after controlling for outcomes at baseline and several covariates, e.g., health, we found that work engagement positively predicted future wages and the probability of rising in occupational rankings, and negatively predicted future unemployment and disability pensions. This study extends the scope of the possible benefits of work engagement for employees, organizations, and society at large and contributes to career research by indicating the importance of work engagement for objectively measured indicators of sustainable careers.

International audience; Job crafting is theorized to operate via changes that employees make to their work designs, yet this critical mechanism has remained scarcely tested. This study examined whether job crafting facilitates changes in two types of challenge demands, namely workload and job complexity, and hindrance demands and whether these changes explain why job crafting may have both positive and negative implications for employee well‐being. We utilized a two‐wave sample of 2,453 employees to examine the relationships between job crafting and within‐person changes in job demands, work engagement, and burnout. The findings showed that approach type of job crafting was related to increases in work engagement via increased job complexity. However, approach crafting was also associated with increases in burnout via increased workload. Avoidance type of job crafting, in turn, was related to increases in burnout and decreases in work engagement via decreased job complexity. The findings imply that job crafting may both promote and mitigate employee well‐being depending on how it changes specific features of work design and that also approach crafting may deteriorate well‐being. We discuss the practical implications of different types of job crafting on work design and employee well‐being.

Job crafting describes proactive employee behaviors to improve the design of their work and working conditions, and to adapt their job to better suit their abilities and needs. During organizational changes, employees may use job crafting to adjust to the changes in their work and protect their well-being and motivation, i.e., work engagement. However, research shows that although the effects of job crafting strategies that expand the design of work (approach job crafting) have been positive on work engagement, the effects of job crafting strategies that diminish the scope of work (avoidance job crafting) have often been negative. This study investigated the effects of the interactions between different job crafting strategies on work engagement, an aspect that has not thus far been studied. Specifically, we hypothesized that avoidance job crafting is not harmful for work engagement when it is conducted in combination with approach job crafting, particularly during times of organizational change. A two-wave, 18-month follow-up study was conducted among public sector workers who either experienced (n = 479) or did not experience (n = 412) changes in their work. Latent moderated structural equation modeling revealed that avoidance job crafting did not reduce work engagement when combined with approach job crafting behaviors. Moreover, job crafting best benefited work engagement when it was combined with these opposing strategies. However, job crafting was beneficial for work engagement only among employees who were affected by organizational changes, that is, among employees whose job design had changed. Practically, organizations implementing changes could encourage proactive job redesign approaches among their employees&mdash, particularly both approach and avoidance types of job crafting strategies.

It is important for organizations to identify the drivers for effective collaboration in contemporary teams, such as self-managed ad hoc teams. Therefore, we aimed to investigate (1) the influence of team task engagement and mastery experiences on collective efficacy beliefs and (2) the temporal relationship between team task engagement and task performance over time. We postulate that to build collective efficacy in contemporary teams over time, it is necessary to enhance positive emotional states (i.e., team task engagement) and mastery experiences (teams’ past task performance). The study adopted a three-wave longitudinal design in which 575 individuals nested within 112 self-managed ad hoc teams participated in a decision-making task. Results showed that team task engagement and past task performance positively predicted future collective efficacy. Moreover, team task engagement positively predicted teams’ task performance over time. This study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents of team effectiveness, specifically in contemporary teams. JEL CLASSIFICATION: C92; J24; O15

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)., The aim of this study was to investigate the measurement invariance of the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) across seven cross-national representative samples. In this study, burnout was modeled as a second-order factor in line with the conceptual definition as a syndrome. The combined sample consisted of 10,138 participants from countries in Europe and Japan. The data were treated as ordered categorical in nature and a series of models were tested to find evidence for invariance. Specifically, theta parameterization was used in conjunction with the weighted least squares (mean- and variance adjusted) estimation method. The results showed supportive evidence that BAT-assessed burnout was invariant across the samples, so that cross-country comparison would be justifiable. Comparison of effect sizes of the latent means between countries showed that Japan had a significantly higher score on overall burnout and all the first-order factors compared to the European countries. The European countries all scored similarly on overall burnout with no significant difference but for some minor differences in first-order factors between some of the European countries. All in all, the analyses of the data provided evidence that the BAT is invariant across the countries for meaningful comparisons of burnout scores., W Schaufeli and H De Witte: This project was funded by the KU Leuven (C3-project C32/15/003 – Development and validation of a questionnaire to assess burnout). J Hakanen: This research was funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund, grant number 190126. J. Sinval: This work was produced with the support of INCD funded by FCT and FEDER under the project 22153-01/SAICT/2016. M. Rudnev: The work is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of a job resources-based intervention aimed at proactively increasing work engagement and team innovativeness during organizational restructuring using a person-centered approach. Design/methodology/approach The intervention was conducted in two organizations: two departments served as participants (n=82) and two as controls (n=52). The aim was to first identify sub-groups of employees with different developmental patterns of work engagement, and then to determine whether these sub-groups benefited differently from the intervention with respect to team innovativeness and work engagement. Findings Latent profile analysis identified three different patterns of work engagement among the participants: high and stable (n=64), moderate and decreasing (n=13), and low and decreasing (n=5). The χ²-test yielded no significant difference between participants and controls (n=52) with respect to team innovativeness over time. However, t-tests showed that team innovativeness increased in the high work engagement class and somewhat decreased in the moderate and low work engagement classes. Practical implications During organizational changes, those initially work-engaged seem to be able to proactively build their team innovativeness via a job resources-based intervention and remain engaged; whereas those initially not work-engaged may not, and their work engagement may even decrease. Originality/value This study reveals that an initial level of work engagement is a prerequisite why some employees profit more from a job resources-based intervention than others and provides tailored knowledge on the effectiveness of the intervention.

Background We defined gender-specific profiles of mental ill-health for the main occupational groups using three outcomes; antidepressant use, sickness absence (SA) due to depression, and suicides. We also examined which occupational groups had the highest risk of the outcomes, and compared the importance of their predictors. Methods From a random register cohort of Finnish working age population, individuals in the six largest occupational groups in 2004 for men and women were included (N = 414 357). We used register data to define the first antidepressant purchase (i.e. use), the first long-term SA spell for depression, and suicide between Jan 1st 2005 and Dec 31st 2014. We assessed the risk of each outcome by occupational group with logistic regression models, and used dominance analysis to compare the relative importance of predictors. Results In all six occupational groups for women, the prevalence of antidepressant use and SA for depression was higher than in the men's occupational groups. The opposite was observed for suicides. The risk of antidepressant use was lower, but the risk of suicide was 2-times higher among men in low vs. high-skilled occupations. Among women, a lower skill-level was associated with a higher risk of SA due to depression. Gender was the most important predictor of all outcomes. Limitations We lacked information on history of medication use or health problems prior to follow-up. Conclusions Gendered occupational status was an underlying factor explaining distinctive mental health profiles in the working population. Occupational class-dependent behavioural patterns related to mental health existed among men.

Background: Being involved in an artistic intervention is related to employeesinterest to do work tasks in other ways and to develop new professional skills. These proactive changes, job cr...

The aim of this study was to investigate the relative importance of four job demands and five job resources for employee vitality, i.e., work engagement and exhaustion, in three different employment groups: permanent, temporary and temporary agency workers. We employed data from the sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) collected in 2015 comprising 28,042 employees from 30 European countries. We used linear regression analyses and dominance analysis (DA). The results showed minor mean differences in work engagement and exhaustion and that temporary agency workers had the highest job insecurity and lowest job control. The associations between job resources and job demands, and work engagement and exhaustion of the groups, did not differ considerably. DA showed that in all three employment groups, job feedback made the strongest contribution to work engagement and workload to exhaustion. In addition, among the temporary agency workers, supervisor support contributed to work engagement and job control (negatively) to exhaustion more than in the other groups. This study suggests that the key determinants of vitality at work may be similar, regardless of contract, and that to have sustainably performing vital workers, organizations should focus on enabling job feedback and preventing high workload in all employment groups. ispartof: International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health vol:16 issue:24 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Job crafting refers to the proactive actions employees take to redesign their jobs in order to get a better fit with their competencies, expectations, and wishes. So far, little is known about job crafting's underlying mechanisms. In this study, we examine how two different states of affective well-being (workaholism and work engagement) relate to job crafting 3 months later and how these well-being states steer different self-management behaviours, which ultimately lead to job crafting. Structural equation modelling on a heterogeneous sample (N = 287) revealed that work engagement and workaholism both relate to expansive job crafting through different self-management strategies. Work engagement relates to challenge and resource seeking via self-goal setting and self-observation strategies, whereas workaholism associates with challenge and resource seeking only through self-goal setting. In addition, the results show a strong relationship between workaholism and self-punishment. Altogether, the findings suggest that self-management strategies can function as an explanatory mechanism for different job crafting behaviours.

Burnout is a response to prolonged stressors at work, and is defined as a chronic syndrome including exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. The 40 years of research on burnout have yielded thousands of studies on its measurement, antecedents, correlates, and consequences. However, most of these studies have used a cross-sectional design, and only very few have addressed burnout from a life-course perspective. In the first part of this article, we reflect on the ideas that inspired our multidisciplinary "A 35-Year Follow-Up Study on Burnout Among Finnish Employees," and the challenges that we encountered when conducting and publishing the study. In the second part, we focus on another understudied topic in burnout research, namely negative life events and their role in burnout. In the third part of the article, we more broadly discuss 6 important developments in burnout research over the past decade, and propose 6 key topics for future studies on this topic. (PsycINFO Database Record

This longitudinal study systematically examines the various roles played by the personal resource "sense of coherence" (SoC) in the motivational process described by the job-demands-resources model. SoC captures the extent to which people perceive their life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful, and there is evidence of its influence in many health-related outcomes. The first aim here was to establish whether a resourceful working environment builds up SoC and whether SoC leads to work engagement. A second aim was to test reverse relationships: how work engagement leads to SoC and how SoC in turn relates to job resources. A third aim was to assess whether SoC boosts the relationship between job resources and work engagement. The study utilized a 3-wave, 3-month panel design, involving 940 employees working in a broad range of occupations and economic sectors. The results of longitudinal structural equation modeling show that job resources predict SoC and SoC predicts work engagement, suggesting a mediating role of SoC. In addition, SoC predicts job resources, suggesting reciprocal relationships between job resources and SoC. No boosting effect of SoC was found. Overall, the present findings support the view that providing employees with a resourceful working environment will help to build their SoC. The effects of SoC on perceptual, appraisal, and behavioral processes may in turn lead to enhanced job resources and positive outcomes such as greater work engagement.

Purpose – Job boredom is an amotivational state at work, where employees lack interest in their work activities and have difficulties concentrating on them. Although recent research suggests that job boredom may concern a wide range of industries, studies investigating the experience and its emergence in white-collar work are scarce. Thereby the purpose of this paper is to contextualize job boredom by exploring the experience and its preconditions in white-collar work. Design/methodology/approach – This inductive, exploratory study employed data from 13 focus group interviews (n=72) in four organizations to investigate the emergence and experience of job boredom. Findings – Three types of job boredom was found. Each type involved distinct temporal experiences: inertia, acceleration and disrupted rhythm at work. The findings suggest that different types of job boredom involve specific conditions that hamper the activation of individual capabilities and disrupt temporal experience accordingly. Research limitations/implications – Extending the conceptualization of job boredom may enable better understanding of the variety of consequences often associated with the phenomenon. Practical implications – It is also important for organizations to recognize that there are different types and various preconditions of job boredom in white-collar work, as it may have a negative impact on employee well-being and performance. Originality/value – The results indicate that job boredom is a more nuanced phenomenon than earlier believed. By identifying job boredom in white-collar work as an experience with various forms and respective preconditions, this study expands the understanding of the phenomenon and its emergence.

Building upon the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this longitudinal study examined whether job crafting behaviors (i.e. increasing structural and social job resources and increasing challenges) predict less job boredom and more work engagement. We also tested the reverse causation effects of job boredom and work engagement on job crafting and the dynamics between the three job crafting behaviors over time. We employed a two-wave, three-year panel design and included 1630 highly educated Finnish employees from a broad spectrum of occupations in various organizations. Our results indicated that seeking challenges in particular negatively predicted job boredom and positively predicted work engagement. Seeking challenges fueled other job crafting behaviors, which, in their turn, predicted seeking more challenges over time, thus supporting the accumulation of resources. Job boredom negatively predicted increasing structural resources, whereas work engagement positively predicted increasing both structural and social resources. These findings suggest that seeking challenges at work enhances employee work engagement, prevents job boredom, and generates other job crafting behaviors. Conversely, job boredom seems to impede job crafting.

In this chapter, Hakanen and Pessi discuss servant leadership from the perspectives of compassion and compassionate leadership in organizations. The chapter introduces the core features of servant leadership and how in the roles of a leader and a servant, managers can demonstrate and practise compassion. In the chapter, three Finnish research and intervention projects both in private and public sectors focusing on compassion and servant leadership are introduced and their main lessons are discussed. Compassionate servant leadership is suggested to be one key driver for positive employee and organizational outcomes, such as well-being and engagement, commitment and job performance.

To investigate the long-term relationships between work engagement, workaholism, work-to-family enrichment, and work-to-family conflict (WFC).We used structural equation modeling and the three-wave 7-year follow-up data of 1580 Finnish dentists to test our hypotheses.Work engagement and work-to-family enrichment mutually predicted each other, and work engagement also negatively predicted WFC. Workaholism predicted WFC, but not vice versa. Work engagement and workaholism were unrelated over time.The results indicate that beyond its suggested benefits for organizations, work engagement may boost the positive interaction between work and family, whereas workaholism is likely to lead to WFC over time. It is valuable for organizations to distinguish work engagement from workaholism and to enhance the former while preventing the latter to have sustainably hardworking working employees with happy home lives.

WOS: 000418117900001, This paper tests and confirms the cross-cultural equivalence of the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) in eight countries and languages: The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Finland. A composite sample consisting of 5201 respondents from eight countries that all filled out the SLS was used. A three-step approach was adopted to test configural invariance, measurement equivalence, and structural equivalence. For the full 30-item version of the SLS, configural invariance and partial measurement equivalence were confirmed. Implications of these results for the use of the SLS within cross-cultural studies are discussed.

We applied a person-centred approach to study the relationship between burnout and depressive symptoms at baseline and over seven years. We examined how the symptom clusters and trajectories are related to the baseline sociodemographic and psychosocial work characteristics. At baseline, burnout and depressive symptoms clustered into three groups: low, intermediate, and high level of symptoms. Four developmental trajectories – low, high, increasing and decreasing symptoms – emerged in the longitudinal analysis. The psychosocial work characteristics were reflected in the level and development of the symptoms. The results support the conceptual similarity between burnout and depressive symptoms in the work context.

This cross-sectional study examines whether job burnout (exhaustion) and work engagement are associated with the clinical productivity of dentists measured by the amount of paid procedure fees in a single month. We conducted an OLS regression analyses of data on dentists working at municipal health centers in Finland ( N = 269; response rate 37%). The results indicated that work engagement was positively associated with the amount of procedure fees and consequently with dentists’ pay level after several work-related and demographic background variables were controlled for. However, exhaustion was not related to productivity after controlling for the impact of other factors.

Objective To investigate the change trajectories of positive and negative moods and their relationship to work ability, self-rated health, and life satisfaction in a three-wave 13-year follow-up study. Methods The data, consisting of Finnish firefighters (n = 360), were collected via questionnaires in 1996, 1999, and 2009. Results Four distinct mood trajectories were identified by latent class growth modeling: (1) high positive, (2) high positive but decreasing, (3) moderately positive, and (4) high negative. The trajectory groups were differentially related to well-being. Members of the high positive trajectory had better well-being than members of other latent mood trajectories. Conclusions Different trajectories exist in positive and negative moods, and these trajectories are differentially related to well-being. Developing work environments in which a positive mood can flourish is beneficial in terms of better well-being among employees.

The aim of this study was to investigate the conditions under which job-related exhaustion may transmit (cross over) from dentists to dental nurses and vice versa. We conducted a cross-sectional survey study among 470 Finnish dentist-dental nurse dyads and used moderated structural equation modelling analyses. We found no support for the direct crossover of exhaustion from one work partner to the other. Instead, we found that exhaustion transferred from dentists to dental nurses only when collaboration was frequent and dental nurses perceived the collaboration as friendly or consisting of mutual feedback. In contrast, dentists were not affected by dental nurses' exhaustion. These results indicate that exhaustion can be contagious in work dyads and may be fuelled by positive and frequent interpersonal relationships when the partner who is higher in the hierarchy has high (versus low) levels of exhaustion. Thus, interpersonal and hierarchical relationships among work partners may play an important role in the crossover process. Limitations and implications are mentioned.

BACKGROUND: Burnout and work engagement have been viewed as opposite, yet distinct states of employee well-being. We investigated whether work-related indicators of well-being (i.e. burnout and work engagement) spill-over and generalize to context-free well-being (i.e. depressive symptoms and life satisfaction). More specifically, we examined the causal direction: does burnout/work engagement lead to depressive symptoms/life satisfaction, or the other way around? METHODS: Three surveys were conducted. In 2003, 71% of all Finnish dentists were surveyed (n=3255), and the response rate of the 3-year follow-up was 84% (n=2555). The second follow-up was conducted four years later with a response rate of 86% (n=1964). Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the cross-lagged associations between the study variables across time. RESULTS: Burnout predicted depressive symptoms and life dissatisfaction from T1 to T2 and from T2 to T3. Conversely, work engagement had a negative effect on depressive symptoms and a positive effect on life satisfaction, both from T1 to T2 and from T2 to T3, even after adjusting for the impact of burnout at every occasion. LIMITATIONS: The study was conducted among one occupational group, which limits its generalizability. CONCLUSIONS: Work-related well-being predicts general wellbeing in the long-term. For example, burnout predicts depressive symptoms and not vice versa. In addition, burnout and work engagement are not direct opposites. Instead, both have unique, incremental impacts on life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. ispartof: Journal of Affective Disorders vol:141 issue:2 pages:415-424 ispartof: location:Netherlands status: published

The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ II) includes scales for measuring 'workplace social capital'. The overall aim of this article is to evaluate the content validity of the following scales: horizontal trust, vertical trust and justice based on data from cognitive interviews using a think-aloud procedure. Informants were selected to achieve variation in gender, age, region of residence, and occupation. A predetermined coding scheme was used to identify: 1) Perspective (reflection on behalf of oneself only or abstraction to a broader perspective), 2) Use of response options, 3) Contexts challenging the process of answering, and 4) Overall reflections included in the retrieval and judgement processes leading to an answer for each item. The results showed that 1) the intended shift from individual to a broader perspective worked for eight out of eleven items. 2) The response option balancing in the middle covered different meanings. Retrieval of information needed to answer constituted a problem in four out of eleven items. 3) Three contextually challenging situations were identified. 4) For most items the reflections corresponded well with the intention of the scales, though the items asking about withheld information caused more problems in answering and lower content validity compared to the other items of the scales. In general, the findings supported the content validity of the COPSOQ II measurement of workplace social capital as a group construct. The study opens for new insight into how concepts and questions are understood and answered among people coming from different occupations and organizational settings.

This longitudinal study examined the consequences of job crafting on two important employee outcomes: psychological capital (PsyCap) as a work-related personal resource and work engagement as an indicator of employee well-being. The study also tested the reverse causation effects of PsyCap and work engagement on job crafting. It used a three-wave, three-month panel design to survey 940 employees from three European countries working in a broad range of economic sectors and occupations. The results of the cross-lagged longitudinal structural equation modelling demonstrated that job crafting predicted PsyCap and work engagement over time. No reverse causation effects were found. Overall, this study shows that when individuals proactively build a resourceful and challenging work environment for themselves, it can lead to diverse positive outcomes that are crucial to employee health and well-being. Employees should therefore be encouraged and be given the opportunity to craft their own jobs.

Summary We investigated job burnout and job characteristics, including decision authority, skill discretion, predict-ability, andinformationflow,amongFinnishforestryworkers(N=4356) ina longitudinal study. Welinkedthese responses individually with data on the participants’ subsequent prescriptions for psychotropic drugsincludingantidepressants.Weaimtostudytheantecedentsofchangesinburnoutlevelsoverfouryearstimeand their health-related consequences in an eight-year follow-up. The results showed that inconsistencyamong the levels of the Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales (e. g., high scores in exhaustion and lowcynicism or vice versa) at baseline identified patterns that were prone to change in burnout four years later.Informationflow predicted the direction of this change for the exhaustion and cynicism aspects of burnout,whereas skill discretion and predictability did so for reduced professional efficacy. Change toward burnoutpredicted future risk of psychotropic drug use. It seems that adverse changes in burnout are influenced bypoor organizational resources, and change toward burnout is likely to elevate the risk of poor mental health.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Keywords: burnout; health; longitudinal; change

This study explored the propositions of the reflection theory of pay [Thierry (2001), Work Motivation in the Context of a Globalizing Economy, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 149–166]. The theory is grounded in theories of individual motivation. However, in a group-based pay context more socially oriented motivational factors may also play a role. In addition, the theory does not take into account that pay may have negative meanings. In this study, we have adopted a qualitative approach to improve the understanding of what meanings group-based pay may have. The research questions were the following: (1) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived as meaningful, (2) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived as meaningless and (3) why is group-based result-oriented pay perceived to have a negative meaning. To study the meanings attached to group-based pay, we conducted 29 focus group interviews (88 employees) in six municipal organizations in Finland. The results showed that the rea...

In this study, we combined the Job Demands-Resources model and Conservation of Resources theory with work-family enrichment (WFE) literature, using the Resource-Gain―Development perspective in particular, in order to (I) investigate the motivating and wellness-promoting role of job and home resources in predicting enrichment in work and family leading to further positive outcomes, and (2) examine positive gain spirals between the study variables over time. More specifically, we investigated whether job resources predict work engagement through WFE, and similarly, whether home resources predict marital satisfaction through FWE. We also investigated the reciprocal effects between job and home resources, enrichment in both directions, and well-being in both domains. The study was based on a two-wave, 3-year, full panel design among Finnish dentists (N = 1,632). Results showed that job resources at TI predicted WFE at T2, and WFE and engagement reciprocally influenced each other over time. Home resources at TI, on the other hand, did not predict family-work enrichment (FEW) at T2; instead, FWE at TI influenced both home resources and marital satisfaction at T2. Moreover, we found reciprocal impacts ('gain spirals') between domain-specific resources (job/home resources) and domain-specific well-being (engagement/marital satisfaction) and between WFE and engagement, thus supporting the Conservation of Resources theory. The same results were found for both genders, suggesting that similar enrichment processes may take place among both women and men. Theoretically, this study suggests that adding the idea of positive feedback loops might benefit the models theorizing WFE.

This three-wave 35-year prospective study used the Job Demands-Resources model and life course epidemiology to examine how life conditions in adolescence (1961-1963) through achieved educational level and working conditions in early adulthood (1985) may be indirectly related to job burnout 35 years later (1998). We used data (N = 511) from the Finnish Healthy Child study (1961-1963) to investigate the hypothesized relationships by employing structural equation modeling analyses. The results supported the hypothesized model in which both socioeconomic status and cognitive ability in adolescence (1961-1963) were positively associated with educational level (measured in 1985), which in turn was related to working conditions in early adulthood (1985). Furthermore, working conditions (1985) were associated with job burnout (1998) 13 years later. Moreover, adult education (1985) and skill variety (1985) mediated the associations between original socioeconomic status and cognitive ability, and burnout over a 35-year time period. The results suggest that socioeconomic, individual, and work-related resources may accumulate over the life course and may protect employees from job burnout.

PurposeIt has been hypothesized that perceived contract fulfilment is positively associated with affective commitment, leading also to reduced turnover intentions, and with mental health, and that these relationships are fully mediated by work engagement. Employing the job demands resources (JDR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the motivational and health‐enhancing properties driven by perceived employer psychological contact fulfilment.Design/methodology/approachThe hypotheses were tested in a sample of 178 Finnish employees using structural equation modelling.FindingsThe hypotheses were supported. Perceived psychological contract fulfilment had both motivational (psychological contract → work engagement → affective commitment → reduced turnover intentions) and health‐enhancing (psychological contract → work engagement → mental health) effects.Originality/valueThe findings highlight the centrality of perceived psychological contract fulfilment to employees, and the importance of work engagement as a positive affective‐cognitive state at work.

The present cross-lagged panel study aimed to investigate the energizing power of job resources and related gain spirals. Drawing on Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources (COR) theory’s rarely tested assumptions of cumulative resource gains and gain spirals a reciprocal process was expected: (1) job resources lead to work engagement and work engagement leads to personal initiative (PI), which, in turn, has a positive impact on work-unit innovativeness, and (2) work-unit innovativeness leads to PI, which has a positive impact on work engagement, which finally predicts future job resources. The study was based on a two-wave 3-year panel design among 2555 Finnish dentists. Structural equation modeling was employed to study cross-lagged associations. The results mainly confirmed our hypotheses: positive and reciprocal cross-lagged associations were found between job resources and work engagement and between work engagement and PI. In addition, PI had a positive impact on work-unit innovativeness over time.

By using a full panel design in a representative sample of Finnish dentists (N=2555), the present study aimed to test longitudinally the motivational and health impairment processes as proposed in the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. The second aim was to investigate whether home resources and home demands have an additional influence on both processes over time. The hypotheses were tested with cross-lagged analyses based on two waves over a three-year period. The results supported both the motivational process and the health impairment process. Job resources influenced future work engagement, which, in turn, predicted organizational commitment, whereas job demands predicted burnout over time, which, in turn, predicted future depression. In addition, job resources had a weak negative impact on burnout. Home demands and home resources did not influence the motivational or health impairment process over time. The results support the central role of work characteristics for health and well-being....

This study investigated the factor structure and factorial group and time invariance of the 17-item and 9-item versions of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli et al. (2002b) Journal of Happiness Studies 3:71-92). Furthermore, the study explored the rank-order stability of work engagement. The data were drawn from five different studies (N = 9,404), including a three-year longitudinal study (n = 2,555), utilizing five divergent occupational samples. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized correlated three-factor structure-vigor, dedication, absorption-of both UWES scales. However, while the structure of the UWES-17 did not remain the same across the samples and time, the structure of the UWES-9 remained relatively unchanged. Thus, the UWES-9 has good construct validity and use of the 9-item version can be recommended in future research. Moreover, as hypothesized, Structural Equation Modeling showed high rank-order stabilities for the work engagement factors (between 0.82 and 0.86). Accordingly, work engagement seems to be a highly stable indicator of occupational well-being. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008. ispartof: Journal of Happiness Studies vol:10 issue:4 pages:459-481 status: published