Technological advancements and sophisticated information and technological systems are being increasingly used by organizations which affect our daily lives to a large extent. Covid-19 pandemic has fast-forwarded the transition towards a virtual workforce and remote working. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are not an exemption and still after the world has come to put an end on the pandemic there are yet uncertainties about the extent to which educational systems will use online or hybrid working systems and how this phenomenon can affect motivation of academics. The study uses a phenomenological approach, and it is comparative in nature where the motivation and experience of university faculty members and researchers from different generations in Germany and the Netherlands. A total number of 23 interviews were conducted with academics in the mentioned countries. Findings reveal that there are some similarities and differences amongst different generations regarding the impact of remote working on employee’s motivation. This study provides crucial information for policymakers in the higher education sector to rethink and reformulate HR policies in a manner that can enhance employees’ motivation when working remotely, considering the needs and expectations of different generations.
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It is unclear to what extent self-employed choose to become self-employed. This study aimed to compare the health care expenditures-as a proxy for health-of self-employed individuals in the year before they started their business, to that of employees. Differences by sex, age, and industry were studied. In total, 5,741,457 individuals aged 25-65 years who were listed in the tax data between 2010 and 2015 with data on their health insurance claims were included. Self-employed and employees were stratified according to sex, age, household position, personal income, region, and industry for each of the years covered. Weighted linear regression was used to compare health care expenditures in the preceding (year x-1) between self-employed and employees (in year x). Compared with employees, expenditures for hospital care, pharmaceutical care and mental health care were lower among self-employed in the year before they started their business. Differences were most pronounced for men, individuals ≥40 years and those working in the industry and energy sector, construction, financial institutions, and government and care. We conclude that healthy individuals are overrepresented among the self-employed, which is more pronounced in certain subgroups. Further qualitative research is needed to investigate the reasons why these subgroups are more likely to choose to become self-employed.
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Demographic changes, such as the ageing of society and the decline of the birth rate, are gradually leading to the loss of valuable knowledge and experience in the Dutch Labour market. This necessitates an explicit focus on workers' sustainable employment so that they can add value to the organisation throughout their career. This study looks into the way in which the workers' motivation might affect their investments into their own sustainable employment. It was conducted in a major industrial service provider, Sitech Services. The conclusion is that intrinsic motivation plays an important role in both younger and older employees, and that the younger workers undertake more action in order to give physical form to their sustainable employment than their older colleagues.
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Background: This follow-up study investigated the year-round effects of a four-week randomized controlled trial using different types of feedback on employees’ physical activity, including a need-supportive coach intervention. Methods: Participants (n=227) were randomly assigned to a Minimal Intervention Group (MIG; no feedback), a Pedometer Group (PG; feedback on daily steps only), a Display Group (DG; feedback on daily steps, on daily moderateto-vigorous physical activity [MVPA] and on total energy expenditure [EE]), or a Coaching Group (CoachG; same as DG with need supportive coaching). Daily physical activity level (PAL; Metabolic Equivalent of Task [MET]), number of daily steps, daily minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), active daily EE (EE>3 METs) and total daily EE were measured at five time points: before the start of the 4-week intervention, one week after the intervention, and 3, 6, and 12 months after the intervention. Results: For minutes of MVPA, MIG showed higher mean change scores compared with the DG. For steps and daily minutes of MVPA, significantly lower mean change scores emerged for MIG compared with the PG. Participants of the CoachG showed significantly higher change scores in PAL, steps, minutes of MVPA, active EE, total EE compared with the MIG. As hypothesized, participants of the CoachG had significantly higher mean change scores in PAL and total EE compared with groups that only received feedback. However, no significant differences were found for steps, minutes of MVPA and active EE between CoachG and PG. Conclusions: Receiving additional need-supportive coaching resulted in a higher PAL and active EE compared with measurement (display) feedback only. These findings suggest to combine feedback on physical activity with personal coaching in order to facilitate long-term behavioral change. When it comes to increasing steps, minutes of MVPA or active EE, a pedometer constitutes a sufficient tool. Trial registration: Clinical Trails.gov NCT01432327. Date registered: 12 September 2011
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Background:An eHealth tool that coaches employees through the process of reflection has the potential to support employees with moderate levels of stress to increase their capacity for resilience. Most eHealth tools that include self-tracking summarize the collected data for the users. However, users need to gain a deeper understanding of the data and decide upon the next step to take through self-reflection.Objective:In this study, we aimed to examine the perceived effectiveness of the guidance offered by an automated e-Coach during employees’ self-reflection process in gaining insights into their situation and on their perceived stress and resilience capacities and the usefulness of the design elements of the e-Coach during this process.Methods:Of the 28 participants, 14 (50%) completed the 6-week BringBalance program that allowed participants to perform reflection via four phases: identification, strategy generation, experimentation, and evaluation. Data collection consisted of log data, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) questionnaires for reflection provided by the e-Coach, in-depth interviews, and a pre- and posttest survey (including the Brief Resilience Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale). The posttest survey also asked about the utility of the elements of the e-Coach for reflection. A mixed methods approach was followed.Results:Pre- and posttest scores on perceived stress and resilience were not much different among completers (no statistical test performed). The automated e-Coach did enable users to gain an understanding of factors that influenced their stress levels and capacity for resilience (identification phase) and to learn the principles of useful strategies to improve their capacity for resilience (strategy generation phase). Design elements of the e-Coach reduced the reflection process into smaller steps to re-evaluate situations and helped them to observe a trend (identification phase). However, users experienced difficulties integrating the chosen strategies into their daily life (experimentation phase). Moreover, the identified events related to stress and resilience were too specific through the guidance offered by the e-Coach (identification phase), and the events did not recur, which consequently left users unable to sufficiently practice (strategy generation phase), experiment (experimentation phase), and evaluate (evaluation phase) the techniques during meaningful events.Conclusions:Participants were able to perform self-reflection under the guidance of the automated e-Coach, which often led toward gaining new insights. To improve the reflection process, more guidance should be offered by the e-Coach that would aid employees to identify events that recur in daily life. Future research could study the effects of the suggested improvements on the quality of reflection via an automated e-Coach.
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A large proportion of the global workforce migrated home during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. It remains unclear what the exact differences between home workers and non-home workers were, especially during the pandemic when a return to work was imminent. How were building, workplace, and related facilities associated with workers’ perceptions and health? What are the lessons to be learned? Lifelines Corona Research Initiative was used to compare employees’ workplaces and related concerns, facilities, work quality, and health in a complete case analysis (N = 12,776) when return to work was imminent. Mann-Whitney U, logistic regression, and Wilcoxon matched-pairs were used for analyses. Notwithstanding small differences, the results show that home workers had less favourable scores for concerns about and facilities of on-site buildings and workplaces upon return to work, but better scores for work quality and health than non-home workers. However, additional analyses also suggest that building, workplace, and related facilities may have had the capacity to positively influence employees’ affective responses and work quality, but not always their health.
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Background A healthy lifestyle is beneficial for everyone, including students and employees of universities of applied sciences (UAS). Although these groups experience high stress-levels and spent many hours sedentary, only few lifestyle interventions focus on these target groups that potentially could improve their well-being, and physical and mental health. Objective This study explores the lifestyle of students and employees at the Hague UAS using a narrative research method. The study aims to create personas, separate for students and employees, to inform future tailored lifestyle interventions. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 employees (26+ years old; 4 males, 9 females), and 12 students (18-35 years old; 4 males, 6 females, 2 identified as other). Via the storytelling technique[1], participants were asked to describe past situations on lifestyle-related decisions. Two researchers independently extracted stories from the interviews and linked a theme to each story. Analysis involved a cyclic process of constant comparison. The themes were grouped in main themes to create a story web. Thereafter, personas were created for both students and employees. Results Although we are in the midst of analyzing, preliminary distinction can be made between several groups of people. For example, one group tends to be underweight and struggles to maintain a healthy lifestyle. A second group deals with allergies, food intolerances, physical limitations or chronical illnesses. A third group incorporated health in their lifestyle. And a fourth group does not care, has other priorities or has insufficient knowledge about a healthy lifestyle. Conclusion Lifestyle is personal and, therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach for all students and employees is inadequate. In more detail, some people will benefit from social interventions, e.g. setting up a sports competition, others from physical interventions, e.g. nudging the stairs. Our next step is developing tailored lifestyle interventions in co-creation with students and employees.
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The central aim of this dissertation is to increase our understanding of changes in identifications and in the professional identity of employees, by investigating the prominent foci of identification, their mix in higher-order social identities and the personal and organisational factors (HRM and supervisory behaviour) that are involved in the change of these professional self definitions. Building upon the assumption that institutions for Higher Education and their workforce are being continually challenged to keep up and adapt to changing societal demands and that it is the quality and flexibility of the workforce which is the key factor to address this turmoil, this dissertation specifically focuses on the understanding of changes in teachers’ professional identity in higher vocational education. For this purpose four related empirical studies have been conducted. Together these studies illustrate the considerable professional diversity in the workforce and shed light on the relationships between foci of identification and professional identities, performance appraisal, leadership, career competencies, customization strategies, professional development and changes in teachers’ identifications over time.
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In small businesses with no employees, learning environments have a low learning readiness. Consequently, learners need to rely on their own agency to shape their learning experiences. Results from a study of agricultural entrepreneurs indicated that the components of motivation and self-regulated learning strategies shape learner's agency and explain learning environment configuration in small businesses with no employees. Configuration of the learning environment was found to be a weak determinant of the learning performance of these learners. However, results showed that prior performance of learners in small businesses with no employees dictates how their agency operates and what learning effect is achieved; higher prior performance results in higher learning effects. We conclude that mechanisms that underlie learning in traditional learning environments work similarly in learning environments in small businesses with no employees.
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The coming decades, the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1965) are going to retire. This retirement wave will cause a loss of knowledge for organizations and thus threatens the organization‟s ability to make knowledge productive and thus competitiveness. As knowledge management (KM) is the formal discipline that aims at improving knowledge productivity, knowledge management seems to be the discipline to provide the solutions to this problem. Although KM literature provides ample solutions, hardly anything has been said about the applicability and the effectiveness of these solutions in the context of retaining knowledge from retiring employees. Therefore, the objective in this research is to make a structured comparison of six KM interventions that are used in practice to retain knowledge from retiring employees (Modeling, Leaving expert interview, File-transfer protocol, Master-apprentice relation, Individual gap analysis, and Knowledge recall). This comparison is based on the four components of the CIMO-logic that is used in design-based research, which implies that this study contains information on what to do (I), in which type of situations (C), to produce what effect (O), and it offers some understanding of why this happens (M). Based on the comparison, this study discovered that the CIMO-logic of the six different interventions demonstrated many similarities, which resulted in the formulation of an overall CIMO-logic. In addition, based on the differences, we also formulated three distinctive CIMO-logics for File-transfer protocol, Master-apprentice relation, and Individual gap analysis. Important finding of this study is that the six KM interventions seem to fit the target group (retiring employees) very well, because they anticipate on the desire to round off and hand over. Another important finding in this study is that retaining knowledge from retiring employees is not only beneficial to the organization, but also to the retiring employee himself. From a methodological point of view, important finding of this study is that the CIMO-logic provides a valuable framework for revealing the similarities and differences between different management interventions.
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