Abstract

Understanding reciprocal relationships between specific arenas in life and at work is critical for designing interventions to improve workplace health and safety. Most studies about the links between dimensions of well-being in life and at work have been cross-sectional and usually narrowly focused on one of the dimensions of the work-life well-being link. The issues of causality and feedback between life and work well-being have often not been addressed. We overcome these issues by measuring six aspects of well-being for both the work arena and life in general, using longitudinal data with a clear temporal sequence of cause and effect, and by explicitly accounting for feedback with potential effects in both directions. Nine hundred and fifty-four Mexican apparel factory workers at a major global brand participated in two waves of the Worker Well-Being Survey. Data on life satisfaction and job satisfaction, happiness and positive affect, meaning and purpose, health, and social relationships in life and at work were used. Lagged regression controlling for confounders and prior outcomes was employed. Sensitivity analysis was used to assess the robustness of the results to potential unmeasured confounding. For the relationships between life satisfaction and job satisfaction and between happiness in life and happiness at work effects in both directions were found. Nevertheless, indication of a larger effect of life satisfaction on job satisfaction than the reverse was obtained. For depression and meaning in life, there was evidence for an effect of life well-being on work-related well-being, but not for the reverse. For social relationships and purpose, there was evidence for an effect of work-related well-being on life well-being, but not the reverse. Relationships based on the longitudinal data were considerably weaker than their respective cross-sectional associations. This study contributes to our understanding of the nature of the relationship between aspects of well-being in the arenas of life and work. Findings from this study may facilitate the development of novel workplace programs promoting working conditions that enable lifelong flourishing in life and at work.

Highlights

  • The influence of work on occupational health and safety has been long recognized [1], importance of work for well-being has been gaining scientific attention only recently [2,3,4,5,6]

  • By studying in depth other aspects of well-being in the work and life sphere, such as happiness [45], meaning [46], purpose [47], mental health [48] and social relationships [49], our results provide an innovative framework for the analysis of the job vs. life dimensions of well-being studied in the literature as well as evidence for their causal directionality

  • The first wave of the Worker WellBeing Survey (WWBS) was administered in February 2017, and the second one in March 2018

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Summary

Introduction

The influence of work on occupational health and safety has been long recognized [1], importance of work for well-being has been gaining scientific attention only recently [2,3,4,5,6]. Similar conceptual idea, highlighting the importance of achieving living and working conditions that enable people to engage and thrive at work over their lives, lies behind the concept of sustainable work over the life course which was introduced in the European Union to help people maintain health, develop skills and achieve financial security, work–life balance, meaningful work, and sense of self-fulfillment in the workplace [14]. These worker well-being promoting initiatives emerge in labor market policies [14] and are subsequently integrated into companies’ strategies [12, 15]

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