Sustainable and Healthy Organizations Promote Employee Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation Strategies

Abstract

The psychology of sustainability claims for a new kind of organization that promotes employee well-being as well as the search firm's performance. In sustainable and healthy organizations, tasks are characterized by their significance, variety, autonomy, and feedback from the job. This way of organizing employees' activities motivates them and can affect their well-being. However, due to a series of age-related physical and cognitive changes, older workers must constantly adapt to task demands to continue working and maintain their productivity. This research explores the moderating role of selection, optimization, and compensation strategies in the relationship between task characteristics (significance, variety, autonomy, and feedback from the job) on the one hand, and job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors on the other. This study was carried out using a lagged design over a three-month interval. Participants were 183 Spanish workers aged between 45-55 years who completed two questionnaires (Time 1 and Time 2). The results support the moderating role of the optimization and compensation in the relationship between task characteristics and employee well-being. Elective selection and loss-based selection strategies do not moderate the relationship. These findings underscore that people who are actively involved in optimization and compensation strategies can age successfully at work. The implications of this study to improve the orientation practices of older workers are discussed.

The Interplay between Job Control, SOC Strategies, and Age in Sustaining Work Ability in a Sample of Administrative Employees

“…From this viewpoint, our study underlined that selection strategies, especially loss-based selection, were not very effective in protecting work ability. This is in line with Zacher et al's findings [38], which showed that optimisation and compensation, but not selection, had positive effects on work engagement, and the study by Segura-Camacho et al [40], which found optimisation and compensation to have a moderating role (in contrast with elective and loss-based selection) in the relationship between task characteristics and employee well-being. Similarly, Demerouti et al [55] found that compensation was the most successful strategy in buffering the negative associations of disengagement with supervisor-rated task performance, and both disengagement and exhaustion with supervisor-rated adjustment to change.…”

“…In contrast to other studies [35,39], we did not use the unique dimension of SOC strategies, but instead we used elective selection, loss-based selection, optimisation, and compensation separately, based on a recent study by Segura-Camacho et al [40]. The authors underlined that while most studies used overall SOC or three strategies (selection, optimisation, and compensation), few studies included four dimensions [33,40]. From this viewpoint, our study underlined that selection strategies, especially loss-based selection, were not very effective in protecting work ability.…”

“…For example, Zacher et al [38] found that optimisation and compensation were useful for maintaining work engagement, and Weber et al [29] observed that only compensation had a positive effect on work ability. As a result, Segura-Camacho et al [40] recently said that it is necessary to consider the role of the four SOC strategies.…”

Burnout Precursors in Oncology Nurses: A Preliminary Cross-Sectional Study with a Systemic Organizational Analysis

“…Besides work overload, difficulties in interpersonal relations (i.e., lack of teamwork, ambiguity) and low consideration (i.e., feeling powerless) received the highest scores. Although not at high levels, these elements are important for nursing management to consider to identify strategies for improving the work environment [48].…”

Testing Demands and Resources as Determinants of Vitality among Different Employment Contract Groups. A Study in 30 European Countries

“…Thus far, the human dimension of sustainability and its work-related antecedents has gained much less research attention [25,26]. Sustainability from an employee perspective essentially refers to vitality and well-being, which have been regarded as the key elements of sustainable performance [19,27]. Many theorizations and models of sustainability at work also emphasize the importance of resources [19,[28][29][30].…”