This study is the first to examine family-supportive behaviors that
supervisors need to demonstrate that will lead to employee perceptions
of managerial supportiveness for work and family. It is also the first
to explicitly link conflicts between work and family demands to worker
safety and the mental and physical health of workers and their
families.
Michigan State University
We believe that this connection between how supervisors organize work
(that is family-supportive supervisory behaviors), and communicate and
administer work and family policies and work schedules will enhance
U.S. public health and occupational health policy. Work
characteristics such as the supervision, hours, characteristics,
culture, location, and flexible scheduling of work can constrain an
employee's ability to care for children, parents, and self and can
bring the stresses of work into personal and family health.
The design of work and public health and employer policies have not
been fully updated in the U.S. to accommodate the transformation of
the work and family relationship. Although workplace studies are
starting to demonstrate that supervisory support for work and family
may be more important (or at least as important) as formal workplace
policies and supports, the specific behaviors that supervisors should
do in order to effectively help employees manage work and family
conflicts have not been clearly nor specifically identified.
Within this study, focus groups will be conducted to identify a list
of family-supportive supervisor behaviors that help in reducing
employees stress in the workplace. We will then conduct a pilot study
to assess a training-intervention using a combination of face-to-face
and computer-based training methods to evaluate effectiveness. This
study will inform public health by determining if training specific
supportive behaviors are effective at improving the health, safety,
work, and family well-being of workers AND if so, determine which
training intervention methods are most effective.
This is the first study to explicitly link conflicts between
work-family conflict and worker safety outcomes, in addition to worker
health and family-related outcomes. We believe that this connection
between the organization of work (i.e., supervisory behaviors that are
supportive of work and family), work-family conflict, and safety
outcomes, will make a significant contribution to the development of
models, learning procedures and measures of supervisor effectiveness
that integrate the work-family interface and occupational health.
