WORKPLACE WELL-BEING
Dr Sherry Aw is the lead for research projects in this stream. Work constitutes about a third or more of our adult lives and what happens at work therefore has a substantial impact on individual well-being. The research stream on workplace well-being focuses on the factors that determine well-being both within the workplace as well as more generally: we focus on how work events and characteristics enable flourishing (or conversely lead to burnout), build resilience against stress and burnout, and how the spheres of work and personal lives interact to impact global well-being.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Remote worker well-being
Workspaces are increasingly shifting toward hybridization and flexi-work arrangements. This research focus examines how such novel work arrangements (e.g., increased autonomy, blurred boundaries), influence various domains of employee workplace behaviours well-being – social integration, job satisfaction, and work-family balance.
Staying Motivated by Anchoring on Values: A Mixed Methods Study on the Workplace Well-being and Addiction Beliefs of Substance Use Professionals in Singapore
Professionals in Western countries providing substance use treatment services report poor workplace well-being (Murphy & Kruis, 2023), but there is no such research in Singapore where the rehabilitation of substance users occurs in the penal system. This project seeks to understand the workplace well-being of substance use professionals in Singapore and how their addiction beliefs impact their well-being.
Work-family spillover: How parents’ roles, attitudes, and experiences in the workplace influence their child’s outcomes
As the boundaries between work and family become increasingly blurred and employees prioritize work-family balance, how the work and family domains interact to influence each other is likely to be magnified. Work-family scholars tend to examine spillover and crossover processes, focusing on how one employee’s work experiences can influence their spouse’s outcomes. Less studied is the impact of work on family members beyond the spouse, such as on one’s children. In this stream of research, we examine how parents’ characteristics, attitudes, and experiences in the workplace can shape their behaviors and perceptions at home, and the downstream consequences of these on their children.
Employee Work Passion: Do we get fired up to burn out?
These research projects examine the role of passion for work in influencing employee outcomes. We examine how work passion and identification for work can on the one hand be a motivating and even protective factor against workplace stressors for employees, but also examine potential dark sides to work passion, in the form of increased stress and burnout.