Elder Employees’ Well-Being Following Organizational Restructuring: Testing the Direct and the Moderating Effects Among Spanish Workers

Abstract

This explorative study aims at finding the effects of organizational restructuring on older workers’ well-being. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in companies in the Catalonia region in Spain, which have implemented restructuring prior to the study. The sample consists of 89 respondents, 46 of whom are age 50 and older (26 males, 20 females) and 43 of whom are younger than age 50 (19 males and 24 females). The Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure was used for measuring burnout and scales developed by Arsenault and Dolan were used for measuring anxiety and depression. It was found that layoffs contributed significantly to the respondents’ burnout and depression levels. This effect diminished if the respondent had a managerial position but was not as much influenced by managerial and coworkers’ support as was expected. In this data set social support does not play a substantial mitigating role in the impact of the layoffs, besides some modest contributions at certain levels. Coworkers’ general support is highly positively correlated with coworkers’ handling of the change and negatively correlated with anxiety only among the younger employees, though negatively related to physical burnout only among elder employees. Elder employees tend to perceive implementation of changes more negatively than their younger counterparts, which may be reflected in their higher anxiety level.