Another perspective on the work environment: Combinations of challenge and hindrance demands and job resources and their link with well-being outcomes

Research Goals – Even though the literature has extensively stressed the importance of considering job demands and resources in a multivariate or integrative approach, few studies have empirically investigated the specific combinations of workers’ psychosocial working conditions.
Particularly, three types of job demands (work pressure, cognitive demands, and hindering demands) and four job resources (learning opportunities, autonomy, supervisor support, and perceived utility) will be considered to obtain a holistic view of possible psychosocial work environments characterized by different combinations of hindrance and challenge stressors and resources. Furthermore, we examine the longitudinal impact of these profiles on three dimensions of well-being : work engagement, burnout dimensions, and job boredom.
Theoretical background – This study draws on the Job Demand-Resources theory (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017) as well as on Karasek’s (1979) theory.
Method – This study is based on a three-wave longitudinal design among 374 Belgian workers. Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was performed to investigate the profiles of job demands and resources. Repeated measure ANOVAs were performed to investigate the longitudinal impact of these profiles on well-being.
Results – Preliminary results showed five combinations of working conditions, each characterized by the predominance of different types of demands and resources : (1) An autonomous, relaxed, but meaningless profile, (2) an hindered and under pressure with low resources profiles, (3) a challenged, under pressure and meaningful profile, (4) an average profile, and (5) a averagely challenged, not hindered with high resources profile.
With regards to well-being outcomes, levels of work engagement, burnout (exhaustion and cynicism) and boredom were found to significantly differ between profiles. Concerning work engagement, the Autonomous, relaxed but meaningless (1) and the Hindered and under pressure with low resources (2) profiles showed significantly lower levels of work engagement than the three other profiles. For both exhaustion and cynicism, the Hindered and under pressure with low resources (2) profile showed the highest scores, significantly differing from all the other profiles. Moreover, the Autonomous, relaxed but meaningless (1) profile showed significantly lower exhaustion than the Challenged, underpressure and meaningful profile (3) and higher cynicism than the Averagely challenged, not hindered, with high resources profile (5). Concerning job boredom, the Averagely challenged, not hindered, with high resources profile (5) showed the lowest scores on boredom, followed by the Autonomous, relaxed, but meaningless (1) and the Hindered and under pressure with low resources (2) profiles.

Overall, outcomes showed stability over time with one exception for Profile 3 Challenged, under pressure and meaningful, where boredom increased from T1 to T3; and one exception for profile 2, where work engagement decreased from T2 to T3.
Limitations – Our study has several limitations worthy of note such as the relative small size of our sample and the non-representativeness of the Belgian population.
Conclusion – The results of this study lead to several implications for research and practice. Firstly, our results suggest that different types of stressors should systematically be included when psychosocial work conditions are investigated in relation to well-being since they could have different impacts on positive, and negative states of well-being, as well as on their different sub-dimensions reflecting different components. Secondly, concerning organizational and HR practices, an in-depth study of the different types of work demands could enable us to act more effectively on specific states, such as boredom which, counter-intuitively, can be brought about by high levels of hindrance.
Relevance to the SGM topics – Our findings highlight the importance of disentangling different types of job demands – hindering vs challenging ¬ in relation to well-being. In this line, our findings on well-being indicators allow highlight some starting points to build a rationale behind this classification. Then, our study contributes to the literature by considering work characteristics combined rather than in isolation. This offers a more holistic point of view on psychosocial work environments and allows disentangling of how these stressors can combine with resources. Finally, our findings add to the literature on the possible effects of these demands by considering three major well-being constructs with different time stabilities over time.