This study explores how employees’ flow experience at work emerges, is sustained, and continuously grows over time. Based on the job demand-resource model, we propose the intraday upward spiral of flow: Challenging demands and job resources activate employees’ flow experience, further encouraging them to seek more challenges and resources. Furthermore, drawing on the perseverative cognition theory and spill-crossover model, we propose the inter-day upward spiral of flow: The antecedents (or consequences) of flow can overflow from work to the family domain and result in employees’ positive rumination, thus promoting the next-day flow experience. Our diary study generated 1,208 data points from 142 employees over 10 working days. We found that in the morning, challenging demands and job resources positively affected the participants’ flow, further encouraging them to pursue more challenging demands and job resources in the afternoon and thus enter this state again. Moreover, the afternoon’s challenging demands and job resources promoted the respondents’ problem-solving pondering at night, which further increased their next-morning challenging demands, job resources, and, thus, their flow. Through this study, we expand the emerging literature on positive organizational behavior and provide information for practitioners on how to build and sustain employees’ peak states.

Even though psychosocial risks can affect the entire working population regardless of demographic variables, multiple publications claim that women are more exposed to psychosocial risks and that psychosocial risks affect people in a different way, depending on their age. This study aims to investigate demographic differences (i.e., sex and age) in health care workers, with an aim which is twofold: (i) To know if these geographic differences lead to differences in perception of psychosocial risks; and (ii) to identify the job demands and resources with the highest impact on work engagement and performance. A sample of 4,451 people from the sanitary sector, pertaining to 75 Spanish hospitals, was analyzed to test the hypotheses. ANOVA results demonstrated that women show significantly higher impact values in job demands than men, as well as higher values in job resources. Moreover, the group of younger people (< 40 years) showed significantly lower levels in demands, and significantly higher in job resources, wellbeing, and organizational outcomes. Finally, multi-group SEM analyses showed that the impact of job demands and resources on work engagement and performance is significant, regardless of sex and age, although there are changes in the coefficients. The differences in the perception of job demands and resources of the different demographic groups can be used to develop specific psychosocial intervention in health care workers.

Sri Lanka has a history of successfully managing communicable diseases by utilising its extensive public healthcare network of community clinics and public hospitals. This article makes use of Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R) to examine the impact of COVID-19 on nurses’ working conditions in public and private hospitals in Sri Lanka. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses’ job demands on public hospital wards included long working hours, limited workplace autonomy, minimal medical resources and high workloads caused by understaffing. Private hospital nurses experienced pressure from patients and their families to provide them with discounts on medical bills. Nurses allocated to work on COVID-19 wards experienced additional physical job demands from wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for lengthy periods on hospital wards in a humid climate. Nurses on COVID-19 wards also experienced increased anxiety that they could transmit the disease to family members. While nurses experienced job resources such as social support from nursing supervisors and other nurses, they reported receiving minimal training in the provision of healthcare to COVID-19 patients. This combination of high job demands and low job resources increased the levels of exhaustion and mental distress experienced by many nurses working on COVID-19 hospital wards.

Do perceptions of work conditions prompt employees to adopt entrepreneurial behaviors? Does well-being play a role in this relationship? This paper proposes an integrated model of the associations between perceptions of work conditions (job resources and job demands) and the dimensions of entrepreneurial behaviors (innovative behavior, proactive behavior, and risk-taking behavior). Following the job demands-resources model, we also explore whether employees' well-being (work engagement and emotional exhaustion) mediates the association between work conditions and employees' behavior. Survey data of 257 R&D employees from the chemical sector in Spain were analyzed. The research concludes that different work conditions correlate with the dimensions of entrepreneurial behavior of employees (EBE) in different ways. Job demands are associated with innovative work behavior. Feelings of engagement are related to the dimensions of EBE and play a mediating role between job resources and EBE. Moreover, feelings of exhaustion and risk-taking behavior are connected.

Most research on the factors driving employees to work longer than expected or preagreed has focused on behaviors of work extension and has widely neglected work intensification. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether job demands, as well as employees' job-related resources and personal resources (skill discretion, educational level), predict behavioral indicators of work extension (total working hours, overtime) and work intensification (skipping mandatory rest breaks). We use data from the sixth wave of a large cross-sectional and representative German employee survey (N = 10 148). The findings suggest that job demands and skill discretion are positively associated with the different behaviors of working longer. The relationship between work extension and skill discretion is stronger for higher-educated employees than for lower-educated employees. Our findings suggest that specific job demands and resources must be considered simultaneously to explain working longer and to differentiate between behaviors of working longer.

The aim of this study was to identify the relations of job demands (work overload) and job resources (social support and autonomy) with subjective job well-being (job satisfaction, positive affects, negative affects), as well as the moderating role of personal resources (psychological flexibility at work) in such relationships. The sample consisted of 4,867 Brazilian workers, of both sexes, with ages ranging from 18 to 67 years. Structural equation modelling showed that the work overload was negatively associated with job satisfaction (β = –.06; p < .001) and positively with negative affects (β = .24; p < .001); autonomy was positively associated with satisfaction (β = .08; p < .001) and negative affects (β = .08; p < .001); social support was positively associated with satisfaction (β = .17; p < .001) and positive affects (β = .20; p < .001), and negatively with negative affects (β = –.21; p < .001); psychological flexibility moderated the relationships of overload with satisfaction (β = .04; p < .05) and negative affects (β = .08; p < .001); autonomy with positive affects (β = –.06; p < .001) and social support with negative affects (β = .08; p < .001). These results are discussed from perspective of a job demands-resources theory, especially with respect to the relevance of personal resources for the promotion of occupational well-being.

Older job applicants are vulnerable to stereotype-related bias in the recruitment process. In the current study, we examined how managers’ job interview invitation decisions regarding older job applicants are influenced by applicants’ human capital-related characteristics, general economic conditions and managers’ perceptions of changes in organisational job demands. Data were collected in two waves of a vignette experiment, three years apart, among a sample of 211 Dutch managers from various organisations. Multi-level analysis showed that managers were more likely to invite older job applicants who had matching qualifications, were employed at the time of application and came with recommendations. In addition, managers’ propensity to invite older job applicants was higher in better economic conditions. The effects of recommendations were moderated by the general economic conditions and changes in organisational job demands, such that a recommendation from another employer was especially influential in bad economic conditions, while a recommendation from an internal employee was especially influential when job demands had increased. The results emphasise the importance of considering the organisational and economic context in understanding the recruitment of older workers. The findings also suggest that older workers, employers and policy makers should invest in older workers’ human capital to protect their employability.

Despite the advent of technologies that enhance productivity, the workload of many individuals, including psychologists, remains onerous, provoking burnout and similar complications. Although the circumstances that mitigate or exacerbate the effects of workload have been studied extensively, the antecedents of these demands have not been established definitively. Without this insight, managers cannot be sure of which practices are likely to contain the workload of individuals. To resolve this shortfall, we first pose the possibility that many cognitive biases, heuristics, and illusions may, at least partly, explain elevated levels of workload. Specifically, we demonstrate that 14 established biases, such as the restraint bias and IKEA effect, are likely to prolong work hours and increase the demands on individuals. For example, according to research on the restraint bias, individuals tend to inflate their capacity to inhibit their temptations and, therefore, may overestimate their ability to work extensive hours. Second, we show that all these biases can be divided into four constellations—self-enhancement, stable worldviews, need for closure, and just world—each of which tends to dissipate whenever people experience a sense of meaning in their lives. These observations, therefore, imply that attempts to foster meaning may contain the workload of workers.

Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, the current study examined the moderating role of recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment from work, relaxation, mastery experiences, and control over leisure time) on the relationship between one job demand (i.e., role conflict) and work-and health-related outcomes. Results from our sample of 990 employees from Spain showed that psychological detachment from work and relaxation buffered the negative impact of role conflict on some of the proposed outcomes. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find significant results for mastery and control regarding moderating effects. Overall, findings suggest a differential pattern of the recovery experiences in the health impairment process proposed by the JD-R model.