Putting context into organizational intervention design: Using tailored questionnaires to measure initiatives for worker well-being

Abstract

Realistic evaluation emphasizes the importance of exploring the mechanisms through which organizational interventions are effected. A well-known mechanism in organizational interventions is the screening process. Standardized questionnaires, in popular use, neither consider individuals’ appraisals of working conditions nor the specific context of the workplace. Screening with items tailored to intervention contexts may overcome the limitations of standardized questionnaires. In the present study, we evaluate an approach to develop a tailored questionnaire to measure employees’ appraisals of their specific working conditions. First, we interviewed 56 employees and 17 managers and, later, developed tailored items focused on the working conditions in a postal service. In follow-up interviews, we explore participants’ experiences with the tailored questionnaire, including the development of initiatives, compared with their previous experiences with the company’s annual attitude survey that used standardized scales. Results indicated that participants felt the tailored questionnaire highlighted issues that had previously been ignored, that initiatives were easier to develop owing to its specificity and that the feedback strategy was useful in prioritizing questionnaires. Overall, it can be concluded that tailored questionnaires may be appropriate for use in organizational intervention research and more broadly that evaluations of organizational interventions need to be contextually grounded.

Job design, employment practices and well-being: a systematic review of intervention studies

“…Of the 31 concerned with outcomes, 10 employed mixed methods approaches, with the remainder being purely quantitative. One implementation study employed a purely qualitative approach (Nielsen, Abildgaard and Daniels 2014, although the focus was on understanding how questionnaires can be used to develop interventions) and one employed mixed methods (Greasley and Edwards 2015). Of the 31 studies focused on outcomes, some 26 provided sufficient detail of the context to make a statement concerning potential factors influencing the process of intervention implementation, although the mixed methods studies tended to provide richer and more contextually grounded evidence concerning implementation processes.…”

“…Two studies focused exclusively on issues concerned with the implementation of interventions but contained no information on the well-being or performance outcomes of those interventions (Greasley and Edwards 2015;Nielsen, Abildgaard, and Daniels 2014). Both involved long term follow-ups after the introduction of an intervention of 12 (Greasley and Edwards 2015) and 24 months (Nielsen, Abildgaard, and Daniels 2014).…”

Can job insecurity be managed? Evaluating an organizational-level intervention addressing the negative effects of restructuring

“…In the initiation phase, a steering group was established that included employee and manager representatives. In the screening phase, interviews and questionnaire data were collected (as described below), and a report of the results from a survey of working conditions tailored to the postal context was presented to the steering groups of both the intervention and the comparison groups (for validation of this measure and a detailed description, see Nielsen, Abildgaard, & Daniels, 2014). Both the intervention group and the comparison group continued with "treatment as usual" practices of psychosocial workplace risk assessment, including an annual standardised well-being survey with subsequent team-based discussions regarding the development of corrective actions.…”

Forms of participation: The development and application of a conceptual model of participation in work environment interventions

“…The form of activities and their organizational placement (for instance in the work teams or on regional level) was an area of open negotiation between managers and employees. Though some of the elements, such as the development of a tailored questionnaire (Nielsen et al, 2014), was carried out by researchers/consultants, the form of the general activities (action planning, prioritization) in the project was negotiated with the employees and managers in the participating areas.…”