Contextualizing Family-Supportive Supervision to Help Employees with Eldercare Responsibilities | Caregivers’ decisions regarding retirement and working time reduction in Europe
Contextualizing Family-Supportive Supervision to Help Employees With Eldercare Responsibilities
Peng, Yisheng, Xu, Xiaohong, Matthews, Russell, Ma, Jie. One Size Fits All? Contextualizing Family-Supportive Supervision to Help Employees With Eldercare Responsibilities. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2020;25(5):368-383.
https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000237
Abstract
Eldercare can pose significant challenges for both employees and organizations wherein supervisors serve as critical linchpins. To better inform practitioners on how to assist employees with eldercare responsibilities, we investigated important work outcomes of eldercare-supportive supervision (ESS), a specific form of family-supportive supervision. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and social information processing theory, we framed ESS as a critical informational cue and an important job resource in employees’ immediate work environment that shapes employee work attitudes and behaviors. For this important segment of the workforce, we hypothesized that ESS could relate to employees’ job performance and time banditry through work engagement, and that caregiver burden would moderate these relationships such that the beneficial effects of ESS would be stronger for employees with high caregiver burden. Using a vignette-based experimental (between-person) design, Study 1 (N = 70) found that employees reported significantly higher work engagement in the high (vs. low) ESS condition. Study 2 supported the indirect effects of ESS on employee job performance and time banditry via work engagement in a field sample (N = 162) of nurses with eldercare responsibilities. In Study 3 (N = 257), using a 3-wave time-lagged design, we replicated our findings and further demonstrated the incremental validity of ESS above and beyond other relevant supports. Finally, we demonstrated that the effect of ESS on work engagement and the indirect effects of ESS on job performance and time banditry were stronger for employees with high (vs. low) caregiver burden. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
Caregivers’ decisions regarding retirement and working time reduction in Europe
Ariane Bertogg, Tiziana Nazio, & Susanne Strauss (2020). Work–family balance in the second half of life: Caregivers’ decisions regarding retirement and working time reduction in Europe. Soc Policy Adm. 2020;1–16. [Open Access]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spol.12662
Abstract
This article investigates how different types of informal caregiving – upward, lateral and downward – impact men’s and women’s decisions to retire or to reduce their working hours, and how welfare policy characteristics moderate the linkage between informal care provision and employment participation. The analyses are based on six waves from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We exploit the data’s longitudinal structure by applying fixed-effects regression models with lagged, time-varying country characteristics. The results show that, in most cases, upward caregiving to parents is less relevant for deciding to remain in the labour market than lateral care (especially to siblings, friends and neighbours) and downward grandchild care. The welfare context moderates the impact of caregiving on labour market participation, with variation between the different types of care provided.