Decent work and work–family enrichment: role of meaning at work and work engagement

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of the current study is to examine decent work (DW) as a critical antecedent of work–family enrichment (WFE). Further, it also focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms that facilitate the linkage of employees' perceptions of DW and WFE by investigating about the mediating role of knowledge workers' experience of meaning at work and their work engagement levels.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a quantitative cross-sectional research design using survey administration among faculty members employed in public and private universities of North India.FindingsResults depicted that in addition to direct relationship between DW and WFE, both meaning at work and work engagement partially mediate the relationship between access to DW and WFE indirectly. These findings showed that the provision of access to DW by organizations will help facilitate WFE via employees' experience of meaning at work and their levels of engagement with their work.Practical implicationsThe study findings would be useful for organizational practitioners and policymakers to design sustainable human resource development (HRD) policies and practices for enriching the WFE of employees as well as in driving talent retention and engagement.Originality/valueIt is one of the few studies that captures perceptions of employees about access to DW policies and practices and its role in enhancing WFE in the South Asian context. Further, it also advances our knowledge on antecedents and consequences of WFE.

Searching for meaning in a disruptive world – Constructing a lexicon of the meanings of meaning

“…As such, meaningful work becomes mistakenly equated with terms which have distinct meanings, without clarification of the respective meanings (Rosso et al, 2010;Yeoman et al, 2019). For instance, Steger et al's (2012) work and meaning inventory (WAMI), developed to measure meaningful work, is often used to measure meaning in work (Kar & Elangovan, 2019) or meaning at work is often incorrectly measured (Janicke-Bowles et al, 2019;Kashyap & Arora, 2022). The ambiguous use of the different meanings even occurs in authoritative works such as The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work (Yeoman et al, 2019), Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace (Dik et al, 2013), and Positive Psychology in Search for Meaning (Leontiev, 2013b).…”

Informal learning, work engagement and their effects on work-family enrichment

“…A recent study carried out among administrative employees indicated that work-to-family enrichment self-efficacy mediated the influence of training on WFE (Heskiau and McCarthy, 2020). Another recent research conducted among faculty members in India documented that meaning at work and WE partly mediated the impact of access to decent work on WE (Kashyap and Arora, 2020). Premchandran and Priyadarshi's (2020) research among service workers in the same country demonstrated that WFE had a stronger link to job satisfaction, while FWE had a stronger link to family satisfaction.…”

Work as Meaning Inventory: A network analysis in Italian workers and students

“…Regarding individual outcomes, experiencing work as meaningful is associated with high well-being (Pollet & Schnell, 2017), high satisfaction in life (Shockley et al, 2016), great self-determination (Allan et al, 2016a), improved health outcomes (Arnold & Walsh, 2015), and reduced levels of stress, negative effects, depression, and anxiety (Allan et al, 2016a(Allan et al, , 2016b(Allan et al, , 2018. Some evidence has also highlighted that employees perceiving meaningful work also showed work-to-family enrichment (Kashyap & Arora, 2022), as well as low levels of worklife interference (McCrea et al, 2011). Furthermore, researchers have consistently linked meaningful work with improved perceptions of life meaning (Allan et al, 2015;Arnoux-Nicolas et al, 2016).…”