Investigating employee perceptions: Association between recognized individual talents and social wellbeing.

Background: Organizations worldwide increasingly adopt inclusive talent management, and this approach appears to rhyme particularly well with the Nordic welfare model. Questions about its value remain understudied, however. The inclusive approach is rooted in positive psychology and focuses on recognizing each employee's individual talents and assessing whether they fit the long-term needs of the organization, since a fit is assumed to be associated with employees' wellbeing. In the present study, we test this assumption focusing specifically on a key talent management practice, talent identification, and the social dimension of employee wellbeing. Method: Data were collected through an employee survey conducted within the Finnish units of four international manufacturing organizations and analyzed using logistic regression (n = 618). Results: We found that the recognition of individual talents for long-term deployment by the organization is positively associated with social wellbeing in terms of supervisor support and social climate in the work unit, as perceived by the employees. Conclusion: Our results tentatively suggest that inclusive talent management creates value through the identification of employees' individual talents as this practice can be associated with their enhanced wellbeing.

Reconciling Work and Family Demands and Related Psychosocial Risk and Support Factors among Working Families: A Finnish National Survey Study.

Working families commonly struggle with reconciling work and family demands. While the Nordic welfare states have been regarded as forerunners in family-friendly policies, worldwide trends threaten work-family reconciliation also in this context. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the associations between family interference with work (FIW)/work interference with family (WIF) and selected psychosocial risk and support factors in the work and family settings of Finnish working families. Data from the Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey 2018 collected by Statistics Finland were utilized to conduct binary logistic regression analyses (N = 1431). Risk factors in the work setting emerged as key covariates as all of them showed statistically significant associations with WIF or both WIF and FIW. Another key finding was that occasional conflicts within the family were beneficial in the context of both WIF and FIW. To conclude, both distinct and mutual psychosocial risk and support factors of FIW and WIF were identified, at the same time as two socio-demographic factors as well as one workplace factor were identified as covariates specifically of FIW. This study showed that work-family reconciliation is a considerable challenge among Finnish working families, and especially to women.

Bottom-Up Interventions Effective in Promoting Work Engagement: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Promoting work engagement is of interest to organizations across sectors due to the associated positive outcomes. This interest warrants research on the evidence of work engagement interventions. Intervention research increasingly advocates a bottom-up approach, highlighting the role of employees themselves. These workplace interventions often encourage employees to identify, develop, and make use of workplace resources. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to investigate the effectiveness and potential underlying mechanisms of these bottom-up, resource-developing interventions. Method: Systematic searches were conducted in the online databases Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, Business Source Ultimate, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Publication year range was 2000-2020. Eligibility criteria were defined using PICOS. To be eligible for the systematic review, the intervention study identified had to aim at promoting working individuals' work engagement by developing workplace resources from bottom-up. Work engagement had to be measured using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. The systematic review included one-, two-, or multiple-armed - randomized or non-randomized - intervention studies with various study designs. Further, a meta-analysis was conducted on a sub-set of the studies included in the systematic review. To be eligible for the meta-analysis, the studies had to be two- or multiple-armed and provide the information necessary to compute effect sizes. Results: Thirty-one studies were included in the systematic review. The majority reported that overall work engagement increased as an effect of the intervention. The evidence regarding the sub-components of work engagement was scattered. Potential underlying mechanisms explored were intervention foci, approach, and format. Dimensions of satisfaction and performance were identified as secondary outcomes. Participant experiences were generally described as positive in most of the studies applying mixed methods. The meta-analysis showed a small but promising intervention effect on work engagement (24 studies, SMD: -0.22, 95% CI: -0.34 to -0.11, with I 2=53%, indicating moderate inconsistency in the evidence). Conclusion: The synthesized evidence suggests that bottom-up, resource-developing interventions are effective in the promotion of work engagement. The meta-analysis suggests that focusing on strengths use or mobilizing ego resources and adopting a universal approach increase intervention effectiveness.