Work engagement of employees who are parents of children with disabilities: empirical evidence from Singapore and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Work engagement has attracted increased interest among human resource management scholars and practitioners. Within a family-work context, a population whose levels of work engagement has sparsely been previously studied has been that of employees who have children with special needs/disabilities (SND). These employees frequently face demanding responsibilities at home, a fact that may have implications in the workplace. Drawing on perceived family-work strain and organizational support literatures, we examine whether the disability severity of employees' children and the support provided by the supervisor may affect employees' levels of work engagement. Deriving data from two societies, those of Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK), the findings of this research may inform human resource management literature concerning the work engagement of employees who are parents of children with SND. Our two-society data collection rendered 430 usable questionnaires. Employees with children with SND in Singapore (n=224) reported higher work engagement levels than employees in the UK (n=206). Also, the research results confirmed that the relationship between child's disability severity and employee work engagement is moderated by the support provided by the supervisor. Setting the grounds for an international discussion about human resource management and family-support practices directed toward employees with children with SND, implications and recommendations for future research are offered.

Socio-cultural capital in the Arab workplace: wasta as a moderator of ethical idealism and work engagement

“…The extant literature has examined diverse employee samples to test three main groups of antecedents of work engagement: (1) organizational factors, including leadership style, organizational structure, and human resource management (e.g. Decuypere and Schaufeli, 2020); (2) job factors, including work environment, job financial and other rewards, and task characteristics including feedback on performance (e.g., Farndale and Murrer, 2015; Stefanidis and Strogilos, 2021; Stefanidis et al. , 2022); and (3) individual factors ranging from trait concepts such as self-consciousness and stable positive views of life and work, to state and state-like concepts, including feelings of energy or absorption (Macey and Schneider, 2008; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004), and others (Bakker and Albrecht, 2018; Sun and Bunchapattanasakda, 2019).…”

Expanding Workplace Inclusion of Employees Who Are Parents of Children with Disabilities through Diversity Training

“…Finally, cross-national studies of management approaches to supporting employees who provide exceptional care might be very fruitful [ 82 , 83 ]. National policy supports for families raising children with disabilities vary widely, in terms of income supports, access to specialized healthcare and educational services, and workplace flexibility [ 6 ].…”

Work–family strain of employees with children with disabilities

“…Caregivers as well as their children's characteristics have been typically controlled for when examining variations on employed parents' strain and work-life integration (e.g. Stefanidis et al, 2022;Brannan et al, 2018).…”

“…When thwarted, WFC is prevalent, and it can be mitigated by resources provided by supportive work environments (Brannan et al, 2018;Stefanidis and Strogilos, 2021). Additionally, families' high care demands reduce their available resources, leading to increased family strain (Li et al, 2015;Stefanidis et al, 2022). Parents as caregivers who devote considerable resources to meet day-to-day needs of children with disabilities experience more stress, with fewer reserves to expend elsewhere.…”

“…Several scholars have previously highlighted that increased workfamily strain diminishes the availability of parents' resources (i.e. time, energy) (Stefanidis et al, 2022), and consequently their engagement in the schooling of their children (Li et al, 2015). For instance, Malsch et al (2008) state that when children have increased support needs, parents who experience increased work strain and have inflexible work schedules cannot meet their parental obligations.…”