Job boredom as an antecedent of four states of mental health: life satisfaction, positive functioning, anxiety, and depression symptoms among young employees - a latent change score approach.

BACKGROUND: Job boredom has been generally associated with poorer self-rated health but the evidence is mainly cross-sectional and there is a lack of a holistic mental health approach. We examined the temporal relationships between job boredom and mental health indicators of life satisfaction, positive functioning, anxiety, and depression symptoms. METHODS: We analyzed a two-wave postal survey data of adults aged 23 to 34 that was collected from the Finnish working population between 2021 and 2022 (n = 513). Latent change score modelling was used to estimate the effects of prior levels of job boredom on subsequent changes in mental health indicators, and of prior levels of mental health indicators on subsequent changes in job boredom. RESULTS: Job boredom was associated with subsequent decreases in life satisfaction and positive functioning and increases in anxiety and depression symptoms. Of these associations, job boredom was more strongly associated with changes in positive functioning and anxiety symptoms than with changes in life satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Our two-wave study suggests that job boredom, a motivational state of ill-being in the work domain, spills over into general mental health by decreasing life satisfaction and positive functioning and increasing anxiety and depression symptoms. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the potential detrimental effects of job boredom and its nomological network. From a practical perspective, workplaces are adviced to improve working conditions that mitigate job boredom and thus promote employees' mental health.

The burnout-depression conundrum: investigating construct-relevant multidimensionality across four countries and four patient samples.

This research seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the distinctive nature of burnout and depression. In a first study, we relied on employee samples from four European countries (N = 5199; 51.27% women; Mage = 43.14). In a second study, we relied on a large sample of patients (N = 5791; 53.70% women; Mage = 39.54) who received a diagnosis of burnout, depressive episode, job strain, or adaptation disorder. Across all samples and subsamples, we relied on the bifactor exploratory structural equation modelling to achieve an optimal disaggregation of the variance shared across our measures of burnout and depression from the variance uniquely associated with each specific subscale included in these measures. Our results supported the value of this representation of participants' responses, as well as their invariance across samples. More precisely, our results revealed a strong underlying global factor representing participants' levels of psychological distress, as well as the presence of equally strong specific factors supporting the distinctive nature of burnout and depression. This means that, although both conditions share common ground (i.e. psychological distress), they are not redundant. Interestingly, our results also unexpectedly suggested that suicidal ideation might represent a distinctive core component of depression.

Overbenefitting, underbenefitting, and balanced: Different effort-reward profiles and their relationship with employee well-being, mental health, and job attitudes among young employees.

We aimed to identify different, both balanced and imbalanced, effort-reward profiles and their relations to several indicators of employee well-being (work engagement, job satisfaction, job boredom, and burnout), mental health (positive functioning, life satisfaction, anxiety, and depression symptoms), and job attitudes (organizational identification and turnover intention). We examined data drawn randomly from Finnish population (n = 1,357) of young adults (23-34 years of age) collected in the summer of 2021 with quantitative methods. Latent profile analysis revealed three emerging groups in the data characterized by different combinations of efforts and rewards: underbenefitting (16%, high effort/low reward), overbenefitting (34%, low effort/high reward), and balanced employees (50%, same levels of efforts and rewards). Underbenefitting employees reported poorest employee well-being and mental health, and more negative job attitudes. In general, balanced employees fared slightly better than overbenefitting employees. Balanced employees experienced higher work engagement, life satisfaction, and less depression symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of balancing work efforts with sufficient rewards so that neither outweighs the other. This study suggests that the current effort-reward model would benefit from conceptualizing the previously ignored perspective of overbenefitting state and from considering professional development as one of the essential rewards at work.

How to assess severe burnout? Cutoff points for the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) based on three European samples.

OBJECTIVE: Despite decades of burnout research, clinical validated cut-off scores that discriminate between those who suffer from burnout and those who don't are still lacking. To establish such cut-off scores, the current study uses a newly developed questionnaire, the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) that consists of four subscales (exhaustion, mental distancing, and emotional and cognitive impairment). Separate cut-offs were computed for those at risk for burnout and those suffering from severe burnout for the original BAT-23 as well as for the shortened BAT-12. METHODS: Relative operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were carried out using representative samples of healthy employees from The Netherlands (N=1370), Belgium (Flanders; N=1403) and Finland (N=1350). In addition, samples of employees who received a burnout diagnosis were used (N=335, 158 and 50, respectively). RESULTS: The diagnostic accuracy of the BAT (area under the curve) ranges from good to excellent with the exception of mental distancing, which is fair. The country-specific cut-off values as well as their specificity and sensitivity are comparable to those of the pooled sample. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to country-specific cut-offs, general cut-offs can be used tentatively in other similar countries, pending future replication studies. Caution is warranted for using cut-offs for mental distance as the sensitivity and specificity of this subscale is relatively poor. It is concluded that the BAT can be used in organizational surveys for identifying employees at risk for burnout and, in clinical treatment settings, for identifying those with severe burnout, keeping in mind the tentativeness of the present cut-offs.

Why increase in telework may have affected employee well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic? The role of work and non-work life domains.

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". Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04250-8.

Changes in occupational well-being during COVID-19: the impact of age, gender, education, living alone, and telework in a Finnish four-wave population sample.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated how occupational well-being evolved across different phases, before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Finnish population. Whereas studies have suggested that certain demographic groups (eg, young, female) are more at risk during COVID-19, less is known whether the effects of such demographic factors may vary (i) across different phases of the unfolding viral outbreak and (ii) on different dimensions of occupational well-being. As they are predictors of changes in burnout, job boredom, and work engagement, we examined age, gender, education, living alone, and teleworking. This is the first study to provide such detailed knowledge regarding the changes in various occupational well-being dimensions before and during the COVID-19 outbreak. METHODS: We collected randomized population panel data at the end of 2019 and conducted three follow-up surveys with 6-month intervals (N=532). The data were analyzed with latent change score models. RESULTS: Whereas during spring 2020, occupational well-being slightly improved, in autumn 2020 well-being decreased back to pre-COVID-19 levels. There was an indication of slight increases in job boredom between before COVID-19 and summer 2021. Well-being deteriorated more for the young and those who lived alone. There was also some indication of females, those with lower education, and non-teleworkers experiencing less favorable changes in occupational well-being. Teleworking appeared to have more beneficial effects on well-being for those with lower education. CONCLUSIONS: The study suggests that only relatively minor changes in well-being took place among the employed population. A particular focus in workplaces should be targeted at younger employees.

Spiraling work engagement and change appraisals: A three-wave longitudinal study during organizational change.

In this longitudinal field study, we examine reciprocal relationships between within-person changes in work engagement and cognitive appraisals of change (threat and challenge) across an organizational merger. Examination of these cyclical relationships provides a more accurate understanding of the complexity of employees' experience of change and a new test of spiraling work engagement and cognitive appraisals. Latent change score modeling is used to analyze 3 waves of longitudinal survey data (N = 623). Our findings showed that engagement mitigated threat appraisals and enhanced challenge appraisals through pre- and postmerger phases. A reciprocal relationship between threat appraisal and engagement was also observed, such that threat fueled decreases in engagement throughout the merger. Challenge appraisal was associated with enhanced work engagement during the first merger phase. This examination advocates managers of change to foster employees' work engagement already prior to change endeavors, along with mitigating threat appraisals throughout organizational change events. Fostering positive challenge appraisals appears to be particularly important for employees' work engagement during times of major changes. Findings suggest that upward spiral of work engagement, as postulated on the basis of the broaden-and-build theory, may be more likely to occur through engagement mitigating negative cognitions (threat) than promoting positive cognitions (challenge). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamic interplay between merger process justice and cognitive trust in top management: A longitudinal study.

This study examines two fundamental concerns in the context of organizational change: employees' perceptions of merger process justice and cognitive trust in the top management team. Our main purpose is to better understand the nature of reciprocal relations between these important constructs through a significant change event. Previous research, building mainly on social exchange theory, has framed trust as a consequence of justice perceptions. More recently, scholars have suggested that this view may be overly simplistic and that trust-related cognitions may also represent an important antecedent of justice perceptions. Using 3-wave longitudinal survey data (N = 622) gathered during a merger process, we tested reciprocal relations over time between cognitive trust in the top management team and perceptions of the merger process justice. In contrast to the conventional unidirectional notion of trust or trust-related cognitions as outcomes of perceived justice, our results show positive reciprocal relations over time between cognitive trust and justice. Our findings also revealed that the positive influence of cognitive trust on subsequent justice perceptions was slightly more robust than the opposite direction. By examining cross-lagged longitudinal relations between these critical psychological reactions, this study contributes across multiple domains of the management literature including trust, justice, and organizational mergers. (PsycINFO Database Record