Well-being at work from a multilevel perspective: what is the role of personality traits?
International Journal of Workplace Health Management
ISSN: 1753-8351
Article publication date: 8 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
It is of great importance for organizations to identify what can influence employees’ well-being. The theoretical model that the authors propose combines psychological and social determinants of stress at work. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of work organization conditions, personality traits and their interaction to well-being in a sample of Canadian workers and companies.
Design/methodology/approach
Multilevel regression analyses were performed on a sample of 1,957 workers employed in 63 Quebec firms. Work organization conditions included (skill utilization, decision authority, psychological demands, physical demands, job insecurity, irregular schedule, number of working hours, social support from colleagues and supervisors, job promotion, and recognition) and personality traits included (self-esteem, locus of control and Big Five).
Findings
Work organization conditions (psychological demands, number of hours worked and job insecurity) and personality (self-esteem, locus of control, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness) were significantly associated with well-being. The results of the analysis show that none of the personality traits included in this study interacts with work organization conditions to explain workers’ level of well-being.
Originality/value
This study provides support for the implementation of human resource management (HRM) practices in order to diminish the presence of stressful working conditions as well as for the eventual development of training programs designed to raise personality traits.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Canadian Health Research Institutes and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec. The authors thank Standard Life Canada for their help in workplace recruitment, and Marie-Eve Blanc and Julie Dextras-Gauthier for the field work. The authors thank Sabine Saade and Bette Miller for the final linguistic revision.
Citation
Parent-Lamarche, A. and Marchand, A. (2019), "Well-being at work from a multilevel perspective: what is the role of personality traits?", International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 298-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-05-2019-0066
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited