Interventions Aimed at Enhancing Employee Well-being: Current State of Knowledge and Next Challenges

Abstract

The concern for employee well-being has grown steadily in the past 40 years. Some of the early theories of the ‘70s and ‘80s (e.g., the Job Characteristics Model - Hackman & Oldham, 1975; the Stress, Appraisal and Coping theory – Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; the Conservation of Resources Theory – Hobfoll, 1989) are seen as the foundations for the present perspectives that dominate the literature on stress and well-being (e.g., the Job Demands Resources Theory – Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; the Broaden and Build theory – Frederickson, 2001). This increased interest regarding the understanding of employee well-being generated thousands of research studies that tested and refined the theories mentioned above. Numerous metaanalyses of cross-sectional (e.g., Alarcon, 2011; Halbesleben, 2010) and longitudinal data (Lesener, Gusy, & Wolter, 2019) generally confirmed the main assumptions of these theories.