Recently, scholars have demonstrated the importance of Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSB), defined as behaviors exhibited by supervisors that are supportive of employees’ family roles, in relation to health, well-being, and organizational outcomes. FSSB was originally conceptualized as a multidimensional, superordinate construct with four subordinate dimensions assessed with 14 items: emotional support, instrumental support, role modeling behaviors, and creative work-family management. Retaining one item from each dimension, two studies were conducted to support the development and use of a new FSSB-Short Form (FSSB-SF). Study 1 draws on the original data from the FSSB validation study of retail employees to determine if the results using the 14-item measure replicate with the shorter 4-item measure. Using data from a sample of 823 information technology professionals and their 219 supervisors, Study 2 extends the validation of the FSSB-SF to a new sample of professional workers and new outcome variables. Results from multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel regression analyses provide evidence of construct and criterion-related validity of the FSSB-SF, as it was significantly related to work-family conflict, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, control over work hours, obligation to work when sick, perceived stress, and reports of family time adequacy. We argue that it is important to develop parsimonious measures of work-family specific support to ensure supervisor support for work and family is mainstreamed into organizational research and practice.

Family-supportive supervisors empathize with employees' attempts to balance work and nonwork, while also actively facilitating employees' ability to manage work and nonwork demands. Over the last three decades, approximately 60 publications have investigated family-supportive supervisor behavior (FSSB), with one third of these appearing in just the last 3 years. Thus, as the burgeoning FSSB literature continues to develop, there is a critical need to understand this body of work in totality in order to further advance theory, expand empirical investigation of the construct, and facilitate the practical dissemination of FSSB-related information into organizational settings. We conduct the first comprehensive and systematic review of the FSSB literature to date. More specifically, we discuss early formative work establishing the construct of FSSB, existing theory, antecedents, outcomes, moderators, and interventions. Lastly, we provide a number of future directions for this subject area related to construct clarification, theory, expanding the FSSB nomological network, methodology, and interventions. KEYWORDSfamily-supportive supervisor behaviors, FSSB, social support, work-nonwork interface

Although critical to health and well-being, relatively little research has been conducted in the organizational literature on linkages between the work-family interface and sleep. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory, we use a sample of 623 information technology workers to examine the relationships between work-family conflict, family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB), and sleep quality and quantity. Validated wrist actigraphy methods were used to collect objective sleep quality and quantity data over a one week period of time, and survey methods were used to collect information on self-reported work-family conflict, FSSB, and sleep quality and quantity. Results demonstrated that the combination of predictors (i.e., work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, FSSB) was significantly related to both objective and self-report measures of sleep quantity and quality. Future research should further examine the work-family interface to sleep link and make use of interventions targeting the work-family interface as a means for improving sleep health.

The effects of randomization to a workplace mindfulness training (WMT) or a waitlist control condition on teachers' well-being (moods and satisfaction at work and home), quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, and sleepiness during the day were examined in 2 randomized, waitlist controlled trials (RCTs). The combined sample of the 2 RCTs, conducted in Canada and the United States, included 113 elementary and secondary school teachers (89% female). Measures were collected at baseline, postprogram, and 3-month follow-up; teachers were randomly assigned to condition after baseline assessment. Results showed that teachers randomized to WMT reported less frequent bad moods at work and home, greater satisfaction at work and home, more sleep on weekday nights, better quality sleep, and decreased insomnia symptoms and daytime sleepiness. Training-related group differences in mindfulness and rumination on work at home at postprogram partially mediated the reductions in negative moods at home and increases in sleep quality at follow-up. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Background Sleep is intricately tied to emotional well-being, yet little is known about the reciprocal links between sleep and psychosocial experiences in the context of daily life. Purpose To evaluate daily psychosocial experiences (positive and negative affect, positive events, and stressors) as predictors of same-night sleep quality and duration, in addition to the reversed associations of nightly sleep predicting next-day experiences. Methods Daily experiences and self-reported sleep were assessed via telephone interviews for eight consecutive evenings in two replicate samples of U.S. employees (131 higher-income professionals and 181 lower-income hourly workers). Multilevel models evaluated within-person associations of daily experiences with sleep quality and duration. Analyses controlled for demographics, insomnia symptoms, the previous day’s experiences and sleep measures, and additional day-level covariates. Results Daily positive experiences were associated with improved as well as disrupted subsequent sleep. Specifically, positive events at home predicted better sleep quality in both samples, whereas greater positive affect was associated with shorter sleep duration among the higher-income professionals. Negative affect and stressors were unrelated to subsequent sleep. Results for the reversed direction revealed that better sleep quality (and, to a lesser degree, longer sleep duration) predicted emotional well-being and lower odds of encountering stressors on the following day. Conclusions Given the reciprocal relationships between sleep and daily experiences, efforts to improve well-being in daily life should reflect the importance of sleep.

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Training supervisors to increase their family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) has demonstrated significant benefits for employee physical health, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions among employees with high levels of family-to-work conflict in prior research in a grocery store context. We replicate and extend these results in a health care setting with additional important employee outcomes (i.e., employee engagement, organizational commitment, and supervisor ratings of job performance), and consider the role of the 4 dimensions underlying the FSSB. Using a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design, 143 health care employees completed surveys at 2 time periods approximately 10 months apart, along with their supervisors who provided ratings of employees' job performance. Between these surveys, we offered their supervisors FSSB training; 86 (71%) of these supervisors participated. Results demonstrated significant and beneficial indirect effects of FSSB training on changes in employee job performance, organizational commitment, engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions through changes in employee perceptions of their supervisor's overall FSSBs. Further analyses suggest that these indirect effects are due primarily to changes in the creative work-family management dimension of FSSB. (PsycINFO Database Record