Interactions of Gender and Race in Workers’ Help Seeking for Personal/Family Problems

Abstract

Most research on supervisor support and intervention with troubled workers has focused on Caucasian male workers and supervisors, with little emphasis on differences in experiences by gender and race. Thus, little is known about how the gender and race of workers and supervisors may interact to affect help seeking and giving. This study examines through questionnaires to 429 manufacturing employees cross-gender and -race worker-supervisor relationships related to workers’ help seeking for personal problems, perceptions of supervisor support, and supervisor intervention. Multivariate analyses show main effects for workers’ and supervisors’ gender on personal problems and help seeking and interaction effects for workers’and supervisors’gender and race on measures related to personal problems and supervisor intervention. African American workers, especially women, appear to experience more formal than informal supervisor intervention. Female supervisors tend to engage in more formal intervention with troubled workers than do male supervisors.