When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools and workplaces across the world, it not only was a public health and economic crisis, but also a mental health challenge for millions.
Shaun Pichler, a professor of management at Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics, is seeking to understand how organizations and employers can promote optimal mental health and wellbeing in future crisis situations.
Along with faculty from the University of Texas, Arlington and universities in the United Kingdom, Pichler is the co-author of a forthcoming study, “Adaptation in Work and Family Roles Link Support to Mental Health During a Pandemic.” The paper will appear in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
How can an organization can support employee mental health during crises?
Our findings suggest that employee perceptions of organizational support are essential. This means that employees must feel that their employer truly cares about them and values their well-being.
This can be accomplished not only through formal policies and practices such as flexible work and employee assistance programs, but also culturally in terms of how supervisors treat employees and how employees treat each other.
How can workers engage in behavioral adaptation to protect psychological health during a crisis?
The conceptualization of behavioral adaptation in the context of our study was based on adaptive performance.
The idea here is that to the extent individuals are able to adapt to changes in both their work and family roles, which includes learning new skills, new ways to cope, and responding constructively to change, the higher their psychological health.
Adaptation is higher when employees feel supported by their organizations—and their families.
Your study discusses micro-interventions. What do you mean by this?
Micro-interventions are designed to be efficient in terms of resources such as time, cost, and contact with the interventionist.
A large-scale intervention that would be useful would be training for supervisors to help employees balance work and family, which would be both time-intensive and relatively expensive.
One useful micro-intervention that anyone can utilize is the “three good things in life” intervention, in which participants are asked to write and reflect on three good things that happened to them on a given day.
What surprised you the most from your study?
The extent to which feelings of support helped individuals to adapt occurred regardless of one’s gender and caregiving status.
We expected, for instance, that feelings of support would be needed more by and more important to women and individuals taking care of family members. This wasn’t the case—feelings of support seem to matter regardless of one’s gender or caregiving status and that’s important for organizations and families to take note.
More about the Researcher
Professor of Management Shaun Pichler’s research focuses on topics related to the management of today’s organizations, including human resource trends, diversity, organizational psychology and leadership best practices.
