National Work-Family and Health Network
About the National Work, Family and Health Network: http://www.kpchr.org/workplacenetwork/
About the Phase II Study National Work-Family Health Network
We have just gotten refunded from U.S. National Institutes of Health for 2008-2012!
A Network at the Intersection of Health, Work, and Family
The Work, Family & Health Network is providing scientific evidence about how workplace changes can have concrete effects on the health of workers and their families. Launched by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2005, the Network has been conducting inter-related studies on how company policies and work life affects the health of their employees and family members. To do this, research teams from across the country worked closely with a wide array of businesses, such as long-term health care facilities, national retail chains and hotels.
The first phase of the research is wrapping up right now. Research teams worked with industry business partners to implement pilot workplace interventions. These studies tested both the interventions themselves and the outcome measures to document and improve employee retention, engagement, and the health and well-being of workers and their families. In the pilot research, three things helped improve employee health and benefited organizations by decreasing employee turnover and increasing productivity:
- Increasing employees’ sense of control over the time and timing of their work.
- Improving supervisor support for work and family balance.
- Changing the culture to focus on the results of the work that matter most for business.
Now the Network is taking these initial results and launching a collaborative, multi-site research project, anticipated to begin in December 2008. The project aims to reduce work family conflict and improve the health of workers and their families. Both employees and supervisors will receive face-to-face, participatory sessions and web-based training. The workplace interventions will be customized with employers as partners so that they target the key needs of that workforce. A random half of the organization’s work sites will implement the initiative during the study period; the other half will serve as comparison work sites and may or may not adopt the initiative later.
The Work, Family & Health Network is composed of interdisciplinary research teams from the University of Minnesota, Penn State University, Harvard University, Portland State University, Michigan State University, Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, and RTI International and the University of Southern California. You can read about the Network’s findings on their website at www.WorkFamilyHealthNetwork.org. This research is funded by a cooperative agreement through the NIH and the CDC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant # U01HD051217, U01HD051218, U01HD051256, U01HD051276), National Institute on Aging (Grant # U01AG027669), Office of Behavioral and Science Sciences Research, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Grant # U010H008788).
About the 2005-2008 Phase I Study of the Michigan State- Portland State Virtual Center
This research was conducted as part of the Work, Family and Health Network, which is funded by a cooperative agreement through the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant # U01HD051217, U01HD051218, U01HD051256, U01HD051276), National Institute on Aging (Grant # U01AG027669), Office of Behavioral and Science Sciences Research, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Grant # U010H008788).
Our research team (Hammer & Kossek) has spent the past 3 years conducting a training intervention study of family-supportive supervisory behaviors (FSSB) and evaluating the effects of this intervention on worker health and safety in the grocery industry. We have demonstrated in a recent meta-analysis (Kossek, Pichler, Hammer, & Bodner, 2007) that most prior research on supervisory support and work-family outcomes has been based on general measures of emotional support, as opposed to identification of specific supervisor behaviors, further delineating the need for the development of a measure of FSSB (Hammer, Kossek, Yragui, Bodner, & Hanson, 2008), as well as the need for training managers on FSSB in hopes of decreasing work-family conflict of workers and ultimately improving their health and safety outcomes. We developed a training intervention to test these notions.
Here are some early publications and technical reports from the study.
Kossek, E. & Hammer, L. and colleagues. 2008. Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors: Implications for Work-Family Safety and Stress. Based on The National Work, Family and Health Network Pilot Study for U.S. Grocery Industry Store. April 16th, 2008. National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety and National Institutional of Child and Health Development.Feedback_Report_Final_
Hammer, L. B., Kossek, E. E., Zimmerman, K., & Daniels, R. 2007. Clarifying the construct of family supportive supervisory behaviors (FSSB): A Multilevel perspective. In P. L. Perrewe and D. C. Ganster (Eds.).Research in occupational stress and well-being (Vol. 6, pp. 171-211). Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd. Hammer Kossek Zimmerman Daniels 2007 reduced
Kelly, E., Kossek, E., Hammer, L. Durham, M. , Bray, J., Chermack, K., Murphy, L. , Kaskubar, D. In press. Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work-Family Initiatives on Work-Family Conflict and Business Outcomes. The Academy of Management Annals (Volume 2), James P. Walsh and Arthur Brief (Eds.)Kelly_et_al_Review_032208
Kossek, E. and Hammer, L. 2008 November. Work/Life training for supervisors gets big results Harvard Business Review. hbrchagnesaccepted
Hammer, E. , Kossek, E., Yragui, N. Bodner, T., Hansen, G. In press. Development and validation of a multi-dimensional scale of family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), Journal of Management.Hammer FSSB 09-09-08
Kossek, E. & Distelberg, B. (In press). Work and Family Employment Policy for a Transformed Work Force: Trends and Themes. In (N. Crouter & A. Booth, Eds.) /Work-life policies that make a real difference for individuals, families, and organizations./ Edited by Ann C. Crouter and Alan Booth. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. KossekDistelberg Style Guide Revisionsweb
