Capitalising on Positive Work Events by Sharing them at Home

Abstract

The authors integrate existing theory on work–family integration and interpersonal capitalisation on positive work events by examining the effects of sharing positive work events with one's spouse on employee life satisfaction. A field study was conducted with 131 employees of a large Midwestern university, who completed surveys online. Participants provided accounts of their most important positive event during the prior week and indicated whether they had shared this event with their spouse. They also retrospectively rated their positive affect and life satisfaction over the course of the study. Results based on hierarchical regression analysis indicated that having shared that event with one's spouse was positively associated with positive affect and life satisfaction after controlling for personality and event characteristics. These results were corroborated in a subsample of 99 employees whose spouses provided independent reports of whether the event was shared with them. This research reveals that sharing positive events with others has unique and significant contributions to positive affect and life satisfaction. More importantly, these findings show that the interpersonal act of sharing is effective when conducted cross‐domain: the act of sharing positive work events with family members increases positive affect and life satisfaction.

“I’m not Working from Home, I’m Living at Work”: Perceived Stress and Work-Related Burnout before and during COVID-19

“…Previous research into the relationship between remote work and work-life stress provided some insights into potential issues for those who moved quickly to remote work including: role stress and role overload from balancing work and family issues (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, & Wethington, 1989;Duxbury, Stevenson, & Higgins, 2018); lack of perceived organizational support (Stamper & Johlke, 2003); impact of the physical environment on job performance (Vischer, 2007); and the impact of subjective experiences of time on work stress (Eldor, et al, 2017). Each of these areas of research build on and support theories that suggest stress is likely the result of "role overload" (Duxbury, Stevenson, & Higgins, 2018) and "spillover" from home to work and work to home (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, & Wethington, 1989), which creates or exacerbates work-family conflicts (Lim & Kim, 2014;Fan, Lam, & Moen, 2019), although some research suggests that work events can have a positive impact on family (Ilies, Keeney, & Goh, 2015). Entrenched gendered expectations around work and family often lead women and lower-class men to be most vulnerable to stress proliferation across work and home life (Fan, Lam, & Moen, 2019).…”

A Naturalistic Multilevel Framework for Studying Transient and Chronic Effects of Psychosocial Work Stressors on Employee Health and Well‐Being

“…positive affect, state work engagement) in influencing employee outcomes and behaviors. In this respect, employees should be encouraged to capitalise on the positive aspects of their work (Ilies, Keeney, & Goh, ; Ilies et al, ), and human resource departments should implement “countervailing interventions” (see Kelloway, Hurrell, & Day, ) that may not directly prevent risks or health problems but increase the positive experience of work (rather than decreasing the negative aspects), and hence buffer any negative effects of work stress on well‐being. Towards that end, organisations can redesign work to provide opportunities for training, development, and self‐efficacy to increase employees’ psychological resources, thus counterbalancing the effects of job stressors and perhaps sever the links between the daily processes of dealing with job demands and the secondary AL mediators that can lead to poor health and decreased well‐being.…”

Why do employees have better family lives when they are highly engaged at work?

“…More specifically, to assess the quality of employees' family lives, we focus on family satisfaction, which reflects one's attitude about one's family (similar to job satisfaction reflecting one's attitude about one's job) as studied by Kopelman, Greenhaus, and Connolly (1983), and on work-family balance, which refers to the effective accomplishment of socially negotiated role responsibilities in the work and family roles by employees (see Carlson, Grzywacz, & Zivnuska, 2009). Furthermore, following recent theorizing and research on the concept of work-family interpersonal capitalization, defined by Ilies et al (2011, p. 116) as "discussing positive work events and experiences with one's spouse or partner at home" (see also Culbertson, Mills, &Fullagar, 2012, andGoh, 2015), we propose and test a mediated model by which work engagement, as an experiential state, leads to a more satisfying family life and to higher work-family balance because it stimulates work-family interpersonal capitalization which in turn affects the family outcomes.…”