Workplace resources to improve both employee well-being and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis

By Karina Nielsen, M. B. Nielsen, Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Marja Känsälä, Eveliina Saari, K. Isaksson. 2017

705 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT Organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of employees in gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. The happy worker–productive worker thesis suggests that workers who experience high levels of well-being also perform well and vice versa; however, organisations need to know how to ensure such happy and productive workers. The present review and meta-analysis identifies workplace resources at the individual, the group, the leader, and the organisational levels that are related to both employee well-being and organisational performance. We examine which types of resources are most important in predicting both employee well-being and performance. We identified 84 quantitative studies published in print and online from 2003 to November 2015. Resources at either of the four levels were related to both employee well-being and performance. We found no significant differences in employee well-being and organisational performance between the four levels of workplace resources, suggesting that interventions may focus on any of these levels. Cross-sectional studies showed stronger relationships with well-being and performance than longitudinal studies. Studies using objective performance ratings provided weaker relationships between resources and performance than self-rated and leader/third-party-rated studies.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8e949d16d21a5408545c75b8148530cb0c582d2c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. K. Nielsen
2. S. Hauff
3. T. Lesener
4. Agota Kun
5. Katharina Klug
6. Anna Jochmann
7. B. Gusy
8. T. Clausen

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. K. Nielsen
2. S. Hauff
3. T. Lesener
4. Agota Kun
5. Katharina Klug
6. Anna Jochmann
7. B. Gusy
8. T. Clausen

In Social Psychology

1. K. Nielsen
2. S. Hauff
3. T. Lesener
4. Agota Kun
5. Katharina Klug
6. Anna Jochmann
7. B. Gusy
8. T. Clausen

Citations in the corpus

• High-performance work practices, employee well-being, and supportive leadership: spillover mechanisms and boundary conditions between HRM and leadership behavior (2020, background): “…positions in organizations, leaders (e.g. line managers) have a key role in implementing HPWPs in their work unit, for instance by communicating performance expectations, thereby shaping working conditions and likely influencing employees’ individual experience of HPWPs (Nielsen et al., 2017).”
• The drivers of work engagement: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal evidence (2020, background): “This supports the findings of Nielsen et al. (2017).”
• IGLOO: An integrated framework for sustainable return to work in workers with common mental disorders (2018, background): “…levels and called for interventions to strengthen resources at four levels: the Individual, the Group, the Leader and the Organisational level, also termed the IGLO model to develop practical interventions to ensure employee health and well-being (Day & Nielsen, 2017; Nielsen et al., 2017).”
• Workplace happiness, well-being and their relationship with psychological capital: A study of Hungarian Teachers (2019, background): “There are resources on individual, group, managerial and organizational levels that are strongly related to employee well-being (Nielsen et al. 2017).”
• Job autonomy and psychological well-being: A linear or a non-linear association? (2021, background): “Moreover, in a recent review, job autonomy may be characterized as an organizational-level resource that is associated with employee well-being as well as job perfomance (Nielsen et al., 2017).”
• Where you search determines what you find: the effects of bibliographic databases on systematic reviews (2021, neutral): “Meta-analyses, on the other hand, use available empirical studies as primary data to consider issues such as ‘how large an effect something has’ or ‘to what extent does something change’ and review and mathematically combine or synthesize results of different studies that used comparable methods to ”