Enhancing Employees’ Daily Inclusion at Work: A Multilevel Temporal Approach to Social Context

Abstract

The mission of inclusive organizations is to create a positive work environment that makes every employee feel like a valued part of the organization. Achieving this goal relies upon not only inclusion initiatives that reduce overall bias and conflict, but also, more importantly, the crafting of day-to-day social context that ultimately enhances employees’ inclusion experiences. Yet, we have a limited understanding about the nature of social context that engenders daily employee inclusion. Integrating the functions of positive work relationships model with inclusion research, we adopt a multilevel temporal approach to investigate how coworker social interactions at the daily level interact with inclusive climate at the unit level to impact employees’ daily inclusion, and subsequently their activities during and after work. We surveyed 97 employees from 31 pharmacies in China over 10 consecutive workdays (N = 911). Results showed that daily support-related coworker interactions enhanced employees’ daily inclusion, which translated into enhanced task proficiency at work and problem-solving pondering after work. The positive association between daily coworker interactions and perceived inclusion was stronger for employees working in stores with higher (vs. lower) inclusive climates, and employees’ socioemotional attribution of coworker interactions mediated the moderating effect of inclusive climate.