Well-Being and the Social Environment of Work: A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies

Kevin Daniels, David Watson and Cigdem Gedikli
Additional contact information
Kevin Daniels: Employment Systems and Institutions Group, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
David Watson: Employment Systems and Institutions Group, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Cigdem Gedikli: Employment Systems and Institutions Group, Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: There is consistent evidence that a good social environment in the workplace is associated with employee well-being. However, there has been no specific review of interventions to improve well-being through improving social environments at work. We conducted a systematic review of such interventions, and also considered performance as an outcome. We found eight studies of interventions. Six studies were of interventions that were based on introducing shared social activities into workgroups. Six out of the six studies demonstrated improvements in well-being across the sample (five studies), or for an identifiable sub-group (one study). Four out of the five studies demonstrated improvements in social environments, and four out of the five studies demonstrated improvements in indicators of performance. Analysis of implementation factors indicated that the interventions based on shared activities require some external facilitation, favorable worker attitudes prior to the intervention, and several different components. We found two studies that focused on improving fairness perceptions in the workplace. There were no consistent effects of these interventions on well-being or performance. We conclude that there is some evidence that interventions that increase the frequency of shared activities between workers can improve worker well-being and performance. We offer suggestions for improving the evidence base.

Keywords: employee well-being; job satisfaction; social environments; fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/918/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/8/918/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:8:p:918-:d:108481

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().