FLOW Lab

Heightened affective and physical reactions to daily stressful events predict poor long-term physical and mental health outcomes. It is unknown, however, if an experimental manipulation designed to increase interpersonal resources at work can reduce associations between daily stressors and physical and affective well-being. The present study tests the effects of a workplace intervention designed to increase supervisor support for family and personal life and schedule control on employees’ affective and physical reactivity to daily stressors in different domains (i.e., work, home, interpersonal, and noninterpersonal stressors). Participants were 102 employed parents with adolescent children from an information technology (IT) division of a large U.S. firm who participated in the Work, Family, and Heath Study. Participants provided 8-day daily diary data at baseline and again at a 12-month follow-up after the implementation of a workplace intervention. Multilevel models revealed that the intervention significantly reduced employees’ negative affect reactivity to work stressors and noninterpersonal stressors, compared to the usual practice condition. Negative reactivity did not decrease for nonwork or interpersonal stressors. The intervention also did not significantly reduce positive affect reactivity or physical symptom reactivity to any stressor type. Results demonstrate that making positive changes in work environments, including increasing supervisor support and flexible scheduling, may promote employee health and well-being through better affective responses to common daily stressors at work.