Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors and Psychological Distress: A Secondary Analysis across Four Occupational Populations

Abstract

This study assessed the associations of employee’s perceptions of family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) and their psychological distress across four occupational populations (n = 3778): Information technology; healthcare; military-connected Veterans; and National Guard service members. Data were gathered and analyzed from four larger archival datasets to compare differences in these relationships. Results revealed significant negative relationships between employee reports of FSSB and their psychological distress within occupations, as expected. Furthermore, results revealed significant differences across occupational populations for employee reports of both FSSB and psychological distress. Hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the extent of these mean differences across groups. Results revealed significant differences among these four groups such that the military-connected Veteran employees demonstrated significantly stronger associations of FSSB, and psychological distress compared to the other three occupations of information technology, healthcare, and National Guard service members. These findings suggest the importance of FSSB to worker psychological health across a variety of occupational populations, specifically noting the importance and presence of FSSB for Veteran employees’ psychological distress in civilian workplaces. Practical implications include the need for training leaders on how to better support employees’ work and non-work lives, mental health, and well-being.

Family-supportive supervisor behaviors and career sustainability of e-commerce female workers: A mixed-method approach

“…Unfortunately, most leaders focus more on performance than the mental state, but women are more emotional. Since a positive psychological state is crucial to making a career more sustainable (Bouleh et al, 2022 ), supervisors should have an insight into the female employees' psychological state to help them keep a positive attitude toward their job and family life.…”

“…FSSB, as one of the special kinds of behavior of supportive leadership, puts more emphasis on the support (such as emotional supports and instrumental support) by supervisors to help subordinates alleviate the work–family conflict and balance work and family relationships (Thomas and Ganster, 1995 ; Hammer et al, 2009 ). Prior studies of FSSB are more related to its influences on individuals' work outcomes and health outcomes, such as higher job satisfaction (Odle-Dusseau et al, 2012 ; Bagger and Li, 2014 ), more work engagement (Qing and Zhou, 2017 ), more innovative work behaviors (Bamber et al, 2017 ), lower turnover intentions (Hill et al, 2016 ; Asghar et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), less stress (Bouleh et al, 2022 ), and burnout–exhaustion (Komlenac et al, 2022 ). In addition, several studies regarding FSSB involve in the discussion of gender difference (Bosch et al, 2018 ; Jolly et al, 2021 ; Yu et al, 2022 ), and some of these researches also extend to various industries (Jolly et al, 2021 ; Sahin et al, 2021 ).…”

Psychometric Properties of Family-Supportive Supervisor Behavior: Lithuanian Version

“…Emocinė parama apibūdina tai, kiek vadovas skiria laiko darbuotojams ir kalbasi su jais apie jų asmeninio ir šeimyninio gyvenimo įsipareigojimus, sukuria saugią erdvę aptarti su šeima susijusius klausimus, išklauso darbuotoją ir išreiškia susirūpinimą dėl to, kaip darbo pareigos veikia šeimą ir kiek vadovai demonstruoja supratimą, jautrumą ir pagarbą šeimos pareigų atžvilgiu (Bouleh et al, 2022;Hammer et al, 2009). Instrumentinė parama apima kasdienį reagavimą į darbuotojo darbo ir šeimos poreikius, kai suteikiama kasdienių išteklių, siekiant padėti darbuotojams valdyti ir derinti skirtingus vaidmenis darbe ir šeimoje (Crain & Stevens, 2018;Hammer et al, 2009).…”