A comprehensive concomitant analysis of service employees’ well-being and performance

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/PR-05-2016-0108
Date06 November 2017
Pages1870-1889
Published date06 November 2017
AuthorFiona Edgar,Alan Geare,Jing A. Zhang
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM
A comprehensive concomitant
analysis of service employees
well-being and performance
Fiona Edgar, Alan Geare and Jing A. Zhang
Department of Management, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose The connection between employeeswell-being and performance, although widely studied in
organizational psychology, has received much less attention from HRM scholars. The purpose of this paper is
to extend the literature by examining the impacts of the multidimensional structure of well-being consisting
of psychological, social and health dimensions on employeestask and contextual performance.
Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data from 281 employees from the New Zealand
service sector using a questionnaire survey. Factor analysis was used to determine items that form various
facets of well-being and performance constructs. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the
well-being performance relationship.
Findings The findings show that different facets of well-being differentially contribute to employeestask
and contextual performance. Specifically, the facets of happiness and trust were positively associated with
both task and contextual performance, while the effects of life satisfaction and work life balance on task and
contextual performance were insignificant. Moreover, work intensification was only associated with task
performance, in contrast, job satisfaction and over commitment were only related to contextual performance.
Practical implications The implications of these findings are two-fold. For researchers, a review and
overhaul of the conceptualization and operationalization of well-being in HRM studies is long overdue.
For managers, improvements to employeesjob performance and the organizations health can result from
simultaneously enhancing multiple dimensions of employeeswell-being.
Originality/value This study providesnew insights into the complex relationship between well-beingand
performance byincorporating a multidimensionaland multifaceted perspectiveof well-being and highlighting
the distinctive effects of various facets of well-being on different typesof employeesperformance.
Keywords Quantitative, Employees, Multidimensional well-being, Task performance, Contextual performance
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
It is widely believedthat effective HRM will lead to good employee performance(Wright and
Nishii, 2013) notonly through correct selection, training and motivation, but also throughthe
ability of HRM to affect thenature and quality of employeeswork experiences (Wright et al.,
2007). This has led to someemployers focusing on employeeswell-being, possiblyas an end
in itself, but also, and probably primarily, as a means to achieving improved performance.
In this regard Grant et al.(2007) observes that many organizationsnow structure their people
management activities with the explicit goal of improving performance by increasing
employee well-being(p. 52).
Research on HRM and performance is yet to satisfactorily explain the intermediary
linkages (Boselie et al., 2005; Wright and Haggerty, 2005). Paauwe (2009) believes one of the
obstacles hindering the development of this research stream is a lack of proximal
performance indicators which HRM practice can actually influence, suggesting the different
dimensions of well-being now require exploration (Paauwe, 2009).
Well-being refers to the absence of negative conditions and feelings, the result of
adjustment and adaptation to a hazardous world(Keyes, 1998, p. 121). More specifically, in
the work environment, well-being concerns the overall quality of an employees experience
and functioning(Van de Voorde et al., 2012, pp. 393-394). Surprisingly, despite growing
recognition in the literature of the importance of employeeswell-being to achieving
performance (Gavin and Mason, 2004; Pawar, 2016), empirical evidence for this linkage is
Personnel Review
Vol. 46 No. 8, 2017
pp. 1870-1889
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-05-2016-0108
Received 10 May 2016
Revised 16 November 2016
Accepted 23 March 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
1870
PR
46,8
equivocal, with research findings ambiguous. For example, some studies indicate a positive
relationship between well-being and performance (see review work by Grant et al., 2007;
Wright and Huang, 2012) while others report this relationship to be either negative or
insignificant (see review work by Daniels and Harris, 2000). These mixed findings are
possibly the result of a lack of research rigor. There is a general academic consensus that
well-being is a complex multidimensional construct with most considering it to encompass
psychological, social and physical dimensions (Grant et al., 2007), however, most studies on
well-being have tended to assess only one facet of one of its dimensions (Pawar, 2016),
namely job satisfaction (a facet of the psychological dimension) (Grant et al., 2007;
Keyes, 1998; Snape and Redman, 2010; Vanhala and Tuomi, 2006). Keyes (1998) suggests the
narrowness of this approach is flawed, arguing that by operationalizing well-being through
satisfaction in domains of life such as family and work, sociologists have implicitly
questioned the conception of the individual as a disconnected social entity, but have not
transformed this notion(p. 134).
Notwithstanding, some progress is being made. The HRM scholarly community are
developing cognizance of the importance of viewing well-being as a multifaceted construct
(Pawar, 2016), with Wright et al. (2007) suggesting that different well-being types should be
studied concomitantly. In their review of 21 studies examining HRM, well-being and
performance, Peccei et al. (2013) also found that well-beings role in this relationship was
dependent on the well-being type examined. This acknowledgment by HRM scholars that
well-being is a multifaceted construct will procure benefits for practitioners, with Grant et al.
(2007) claiming a key outcome to come from placing a greater emphasis on well-beings
multiple dimensions is that organizations will be able to identify and subsequently manage
the synergies created. Although intuitively appealing, the veracity of this claim is, however,
largely unknown as there has been little empirical research done which examines how
multiple dimensions of well-being vary in influencing employeesperformance.
To address this gap, our study considers three differentiated dimensions of well-being:
psychological, social, and health (Grant et al., 2007), exploring the extent to which a
multidimensional and multifaceted set of well-being constructs lead to different task and
contextual performance outcomes. We see this research contributing to the literature in
several ways. First, putting to one side the plethora of rhetoric about the multidimensional
nature of well-being making it a complex construct for examination (Peccei, 2004), our study
seeks to concomitantly examine these different perspectives and, in doing so, well-being
synergies are also able to be explored. This type of holistic analysis allows us to deepen our
understanding of how functional connections in the workplace are achieved
(Martinetti, 2000). Second, our research contributes to knowledge about how, and the
extent to which, different dimensions of well-being may differentially impact on task and
contextual performance. This enables us to respond to calls in the extant literature for more
research examining the distinctive effects of specific well-being types on performance and it
also provides the opportunity to present new evidence to support claims that well-being
serves a social good as well as playing an important role in enhancing employees
performance in organizations (Huang et al., 2016).
In the following sections we review the literature and introduce the research approach.
We then report and discuss our findings and conclude by outlining some of the implications
for theory and practice that stem from our research and highlighting some directions for
future research.
The literature
Well-being in the workplace
The importance of employeeswell-being lies in both its relationship to performance and
because it is a crucial component of healthy organizations (Pawar, 2016). Healthy organizations
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Comprehensive
concomitant
analysis

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