The effectiveness of work-nonwork interventions: A theoretical synthesis and meta-analysis.

A growing body of intervention studies is concerned with improving the work-nonwork interface. Extant work-nonwork interventions are diverse in terms of content and effectiveness. We map these interventions onto work-nonwork theories that explain why the interventions should improve proximal work-nonwork outcomes (i.e., conflict, enrichment, balance). Our resulting integrative framework suggests that interventions can affect work-nonwork outcomes via distinct mechanisms, which can be delineated according to their (a) content valence (i.e., increasing resources/positive characteristics or decreasing demands/negative characteristics); (b) locality (i.e., personal or contextual factors); and (c) domain (i.e., work, the nonwork, or the boundary-spanning). We further provide a meta-analytic review of the efficacy of such interventions based on 6,680 participants within 26 pre-post control group design intervention studies. The meta-analytic results reveal an overall significant main effect across all identified interventions for improving proximal work-nonwork outcomes. When comparing different kinds of interventions aimed at increasing resources, we found beneficial effects for interventions targeting personal resources over contextual resources and interventions in the nonwork domain compared to interventions in the work or boundary-spanning domain. We conclude that work-nonwork interventions effectively improve the work-nonwork interface and discuss theoretical and practical implications of the more substantial effects and potential advantages of interventions aimed at enhancing personal resources in the nonwork domain. Finally, we provide concrete recommendations for future research and elaborate on the type of studies we would like to see in terms of interventions targeting the reduction of demands, for which we found only a limited number of studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Fighting the 400-Year Pandemic: Racism Against Black People in Organizations.

Anti-Black racism is a pernicious problem that has plagued the USA throughout history. In 2020, we saw intense moments that highlighted the stark anti-Black racism and racial inequity in America. Namely, the murder of George Floyd coupled with the disproportionate levels of negative outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic affecting Black people in the USA. These instances called attention to the considerable racial inequality in US society and reminded many people that racism seeps throughout all facets of life. Our first goal with this special issue was to call attention to research within in the organizational sciences that focuses on anti-Black racism. The articles in this issue call attention to some of the manifestations and consequences of anti-Black racism as well as ways to reduce its insidious effects. Our second goal was to intentionally highlight the work of Black scholars in the field of I-O psychology. As such, we engaged in targeted recruiting that allowed us to successfully curate articles from a racially diverse group of scholars, and we are able to highlight the work of Black scholars and practitioners in the field.

Remote worker communication during COVID-19: The role of quantity, quality, and supervisor expectation-setting.

Given the huge increase in remote work that has accompanied the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, understanding predictors of performance and wellbeing among remote workers has never been more timely. Effective communication is commonly cited as key to remote worker success, yet communication variables are rarely incorporated into remote work research. In the present study, we examined the relationship between communication frequency, communication quality, and supervisor-set communication expectations with daily job performance and burnout in an occupationally-diverse sample of employees. We used an experience sampling design and our hypotheses were tested with data collected over a 4-week period with a sample of 471 employees who shifted to full-time remote work due to COVID-19. Results indicated that daily communication quality was associated with daily performance and burnout. In addition, the extent to which supervisors established expectations about communication practices (e.g., expected response times to email) at the onset of the transition to remote work was positively associated with performance, but not burnout. Task interdependence was also tested as a moderator. Task interdependence moderated the relationship between communication quality and performance, such that the relationship was stronger when task interdependence was higher than when it was lower. Task interdependence also moderated the relationship between supervisor-set expectations and performance such that the relationship was stronger when task interdependence was lower than when it was higher. Expected curvilinear relationships between communication frequency and outcomes were not detected. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for practice and future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings: A within-person field experiment.

The COVID-19 pandemic propelled many employees into remote work arrangements, and face-to-face meetings were quickly replaced with virtual meetings. This rapid uptick in the use of virtual meetings led to much popular press discussion of virtual meeting fatigue (i.e., "Zoom fatigue"), described as a feeling of being drained and lacking energy following a day of virtual meetings. In this study, we aimed to better understand how one salient feature of virtual meetings-the camera-impacts fatigue, which may affect outcomes during meetings (e.g., participant voice and engagement). We did so through the use of a 4-week within-person experience sampling field experiment where camera use was manipulated. Drawing from theory related to self-presentation, we propose and test a model where study condition (camera on versus off) was linked to daily feelings of fatigue; daily fatigue, in turn, was presumed to relate negatively to voice and engagement during virtual meetings. We further predict that gender and organizational tenure will moderate this relationship such that using a camera during virtual meetings will be more fatiguing for women and newer members of the organization. Results of 1,408 daily observations from 103 employees supported our proposed model, with supplemental analyses suggesting that fatigue affects same-day and next-day meeting performance. Given the anticipated prevalence of remote work even after the pandemic subsides, our study offers key insights for ongoing organizational best practices surrounding virtual meetings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Work-family strategies during COVID-19: Examining gender dynamics among dual-earner couples with young children.

There are several existing typologies of dual-earner couples focused on how they dually manage work and family; however, these all assume that couples can outsource childcare during normal work hours and that work is largely conducted outside of the home. Early attempts to control COVID-19 altered these assumptions with daycares/schools closing and the heavy shift to remote work. This calls into question whether couples tended to fall back on familiar gendered patterns to manage work and family, or if they adopted new strategies for the unique pandemic situation. We addressed this question using a sample of 274 dual-earner couples with young children. We content coded couples' qualitative responses about their plans for managing childcare and work commitments and used these codes in a latent class analysis to identify subgroups. Seven classes were identified, with 36.6% of the sample using strategies where women did most or all childcare, 18.9% of the sample using strategies that were not clearly gendered or egalitarian, and 44.5% of the sample using unique egalitarian strategies. We also obtained data from 133 of these couples approximately 7 weeks later regarding their well-being and job performance. Results suggested that women in the Remote Wife Does It All class had the lowest well-being and performance. There were nuanced differences between the egalitarian strategies in their relationships with outcomes, with the Alternating Days egalitarian category emerging as the overall strategy that best preserved wives' and husbands' well-being while allowing both to maintain adequate job performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A cross-national meta-analytic examination of predictors and outcomes associated with work-family conflict.

Through the lens of boundary theory, we systematically examined cultural context as a moderator of relationships between work-family conflict and its key theoretical predictors (work/family hours and work/family demands) and outcomes (job satisfaction, family satisfaction, and life satisfaction). We used 2 different approaches to examine cultural variation in the strength of work-family conflict relationships: (a) individual cultural values (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance); and (b) regional cluster configurations (e.g., Eastern Europe, South Asia). Our meta-analytic investigation is based on data drawn from 332 studies (2,733 effect sizes) that represent 58 different countries. Consistent with prediction, results revealed that collectivism moderated WIF/FIW and satisfaction outcomes such that relationships were weaker in more collectivistic contexts than in less collectivistic contexts. Little evidence was found to support power distance or uncertainty avoidance as individual cultural moderators. Findings also indicated that work-family conflict relationships differ in strength as a function of regional clusters, lending support to the use of configural approaches to examine cross-cultural variation. Overall, our findings suggest that domain demands are a robust predictor of work-family conflict across countries and that affective correlates to work-family conflict meaningfully vary in strength as a function of cultural context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Enhancing Educator Engagement in School Mental Health Care Through Digital Simulation Professional Development.

BACKGROUND: Despite the critical role of educators as gatekeepers for school mental health services, they receive limited training to support student mental health. We report findings from a trial of an online mental health role-play simulation for elementary school teachers on changes in attitudes and self-reported helping behaviors for students experiencing psychological distress. METHODS: We randomly assigned 18,896 elementary school teachers to wait-list control or intervention conditions in which they received the 45- to 90-minute online role-play simulation. We administered a version of the validated Gatekeeper Behavior Scale at baseline and postintervention, which measures attitudinal dimensions shown to predict teacher helping behavior change. Self-reported helping behaviors were collected at baseline and 3-month follow-up. Outcomes were compared between the intervention follow-up and control group baseline measures. RESULTS: The intervention group posttraining scores were significantly higher (p < .001) than the control group for all the preparedness, likelihood, and self-efficacy Gatekeeper Behavior subscales. All 5 helping behaviors were significantly higher among the intervention group at follow-up compared to the control group at baseline. CONCLUSIONS: We found that a brief online role-play simulation was an effective strategy for improving teacher attitudes and behaviors needed to perform a positive mental health gatekeeper role in schools.

A meta-analysis of work-family conflict and social support.

The relationship between social support and work-family conflict is well-established, but the notion that different forms, sources, and types of social support as well as contextual factors can alter this relationship has been relatively neglected. To address this limitation, the current study provides the most comprehensive and in-depth examination of the relationship between social support and work-family conflict to date. We conduct a meta-analysis based on 1021 effect sizes and 46 countries to dissect the social support and work-family conflict relationship. Using social support theory as a theoretical framework, we challenge the assumption that social support measures are interchangeable by comparing work/family support relationships with work-family conflict across different support forms (behavior, perceptions), sources (e.g., supervisor, coworker, spouse), types (instrumental, emotional), and national contexts (cultural values, economic factors). National context hypotheses use a strong inferences paradigm in which utility and value congruence theoretical perspectives are pitted against one another. Significant results concerning support source are in line with social support theory, indicating that broad sources of support are more strongly related to work-family conflict than are specific sources of support. In line with utility perspective from social support theory, culture and economic national context significantly moderate some of the relationships between work/family support and work interference with family, indicating that social support is most beneficial in contexts in which it is needed or perceived as useful. The results suggest that organizational support may be the most important source of support overall. (PsycINFO Database Record

Disentangling the relationship between gender and work-family conflict: An integration of theoretical perspectives using meta-analytic methods.

Implicit in many discussions of work-family issues is the idea that managing the work-family interface is more challenging for women than men. We address whether this intuition is supported by the empirical data via a meta-analysis of gender differences in work-family conflict (WFC) based on more than 350 independent samples (N > 250,000 workers). Challenging lay perceptions, our results demonstrate that men and women generally do not differ on their reports of WFC, though there were some modest moderating effects of dual-earner status, parental status, type of WFC (i.e., time-, strain-, vs. behavior-based), and when limiting samples to men and women who held the same job. To better understand the relationship between gender and WFC, we engaged in theory-testing of mediating mechanisms based on commonly invoked theoretical perspectives. We found evidence in support of the rational view, no support for the sensitization and male segmentation perspectives, and partial support for the asymmetrical domain permeability model. Finally, we build theory by seeking to identify omitted mediators that explain the relationship between gender and work-interference-with-family, given evidence that existing theoretically specified mechanisms are insufficient to explain this relationship. Overall, we find more evidence for similarity rather than difference in the degree of WFC experienced by men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record

Development and Validation of the Gatekeeper Behavior Scale.

BACKGROUND: Community-based gatekeeper trainings are effective tools in increasing gatekeeper skills but few validated measures assess impact. AIMS: This study aimed at determining the validity of an 11-item Gatekeeper Behavior Scale (GBS) to assess gatekeeper skills that predict behavior. METHOD: To validate the scale, 8,931 users were administered GBS surveys at pretraining, posttraining, and follow-up periods. The training was one of five from the suite of online At-Risk mental health learning simulations for university faculty/staff or students or high/middle school educators. RESULTS: A confirmatory factor analysis revealed the three-factor model based on the subscales of preparedness, likelihood, and self-efficacy fit the data best. Factor loadings showed all items correlated highly with theoretical constructs (r ≥ .84, p < .001). The GBS had high internal consistency (α = 0.93). Criterion-related validity for likelihood to discuss concerns at posttraining was significantly related to approaching students believed to be in psychological distress (r = .219, p < .001). Likelihood to refer significantly correlated with the number of students referred (r = .235, p < .001). Convergent validity was established via a correlation between self-efficacy in motivating someone to seek help and general self-efficacy (r = .519, p < .001). CONCLUSION: The GBS appears to be a valid tool in measuring the impact of online gatekeeper training simulations and holds promise for assessing other delivery methods.

How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.

Telecommuting has become an increasingly popular work mode that has generated significant interest from scholars and practitioners alike. With recent advances in technology that enable mobile connections at ever-affordable rates, working away from the office as a telecommuter has become increasingly available to many workers around the world. Since the term telecommuting was first coined in the 1970s, scholars and practitioners have debated the merits of working away from the office, as it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations have historically done business. Complicating efforts to truly understand the implications of telecommuting have been the widely varying definitions and conceptualizations of telecommuting and the diverse fields in which research has taken place.Our objective in this article is to review existing research on telecommuting in an effort to better understand what we as a scientific community know about telecommuting and its implications. In so doing, we aim to bring to the surface some of the intricacies associated with telecommuting research so that we may shed insights into the debate regarding telecommuting's benefits and drawbacks. We attempt to sift through the divergent and at times conflicting literature to develop an overall sense of the status of our scientific findings, in an effort to identify not only what we know and what we think we know about telecommuting, but also what we must yet learn to fully understand this increasingly important work mode.After a brief review of the history of telecommuting and its prevalence, we begin by discussing the definitional challenges inherent within existing literature and offer a comprehensive definition of telecommuting rooted in existing research. Our review starts by highlighting the need to interpret existing findings with an understanding of how the extent of telecommuting practiced by participants in a study is likely to alter conclusions that may be drawn. We then review telecommuting's implications for employees' work-family issues, attitudes, and work outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment and identification, stress, performance, wages, withdrawal behaviors, and firm-level metrics. Our article continues by discussing research findings concerning salient contextual issues that might influence or alter the impact of telecommuting, including the nature of the work performed while telecommuting, interpersonal processes such as knowledge sharing and innovation, and additional considerations that include motives for telecommuting such as family responsibilities. We also cover organizational culture and support that may shape the telecommuting experience, after which we discuss the community and societal effects of telecommuting, including its effects on traffic and emissions, business continuity, and work opportunities, as well as the potential impact on societal ties. Selected examples of telecommuting legislation and policies are also provided in an effort to inform readers regarding the status of the national debate and its legislative implications. Our synthesis concludes by offering recommendations for telecommuting research and practice that aim to improve the quality of data on telecommuting as well as identify areas of research in need of development.

Episodic work-family conflict, cardiovascular indicators, and social support: an experience sampling approach.

Work-family conflict, a prevalent stressor in today's workforce, has been linked to several detrimental consequences for the individual, including physical health. The present study extends this area of research by examining episodic work-family conflict in relation to objectively measured cardiovascular health indicators (systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate) using an experience sampling methodology. The results suggested that the occurrence of an episode of work interference with family conflict is linked to a subsequent increase in heart rate but not blood pressure; however, the relationship between episodes of family interference with work conflict and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure is moderated by perceptions of family-supportive supervision. No evidence was found for the moderating role of work-supportive family. Further theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Using an Avatar-Based Simulation to Train Families to Motivate Veterans with Post-Deployment Stress to Seek Help at the VA.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the effectiveness of "Family of Heroes," an online avatar-based post-deployment stress and resiliency training simulation, in increasing families' engagement in motivating their veterans who exhibit signs of post-deployment stress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression, and suicide ideation, to seek help at the Veterans Administration (VA). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n=50) that completed the online training and pre- and post-intervention and 1-month follow-up surveys or a control group (n=44) who only completed a pre-test and a 1-month follow-up survey. RESULTS: The experimental group exhibited significantly greater changes in its preparedness and likelihood to recognize signs of post-deployment stress and in approaching their veteran to discuss their concern and motivate them to seek help at the VA. This group also reported significant change in actual behavior in terms of discussing their concern with their veteran (79 percent approached to discuss vs. 56 percent for the control group). Finally, seven (22 percent) of the veterans who were approached by the experimental group started to receive mental health treatment (five at the VA). All seven were previously diagnosed with PTSD and/or depression but never before started treatment at the VA. CONCLUSION: Results strongly suggest that "Family of Heroes" is an effective tool to engage families in taking an active role in motivating their veterans who exhibit signs of post-deployment stress to seek help at the VA. Results also suggest that the training can increase the actual number of veterans experiencing post-deployment stress who begin to receive treatment at the VA.