Background
Optimal mental health yields many benefits and reduced costs to employees and organizations; however, the workplace introduces challenges to building and maintaining mental health that ...affect well-being. Although many organizations have introduced programming to aid employee mental health and well-being, the uptake and effectiveness of these efforts vary. One barrier to developing more effective interventions is a lack of understanding about how to improve well-being over time. This study examined not only whether employer-provided coaching is an effective strategy to improve mental health and well-being in employees but also how this intervention changes well-being in stages over time.
Objective
The goal of this study was to determine whether BetterUp, a longitudinal one-on-one virtual coaching intervention, improves components of mental health and psychological well-being, and whether the magnitude of changes vary in stages over time. This is the first research study to evaluate the effectiveness of professional coaching through three repeated assessments, moving beyond a pre-post intervention design. The outcomes of this study will enable coaches and employers to design more targeted interventions by outlining when to expect maximal growth in specific outcomes throughout the coaching engagement.
Methods
Three identical assessments were completed by 391 users of BetterUp: prior to the start of coaching, after approximately 3-4 months of coaching, and again after 6-7 months of coaching. Three scales were used to evaluate psychological and behavioral dimensions that support management of mental health: stress management, resilience, and life satisfaction. Six additional scales were used to assess psychological well-being: emotional regulation, prospection ability, finding purpose and meaning, self-awareness, self-efficacy, and social connection.
Results
Using mixed-effects modeling, varying rates of change were observed in several dimensions of mental health and psychological well-being. Initial rapid improvements in the first half of the intervention, followed by slower growth in the second half of the intervention were found for prospection ability, self-awareness, self-efficacy, social connection, emotional regulation, and a reduction in stress (range of unstandardized β values for each assessment: .10-.19). Life satisfaction improved continuously throughout the full intervention period (β=.13). Finding purpose in meaning at work and building resilience both grew continuously throughout the coaching intervention, but larger gains were experienced in the second half of the intervention (β=.08-.18), requiring the full length of the intervention to realize maximal growth.
Conclusions
The results demonstrate the effectiveness of BetterUp virtual one-on-one coaching to improve psychological well-being, while mitigating threats to mental health such as excessive and prolonged stress, low resilience, and poor satisfaction with life. The improvements across the collection of outcomes were time-dependent, and provide important insights to users and practitioners about how and when to expect maximal improvements in a range of interrelated personal and professional outcomes.
Experiments prompting people to engage in more prosocial behavior (e.g., acts of kindness) or simple social interactions (e.g., acting extraverted) have both shown promise in boosting well-being. ...However, little is known about how much the impact on well-being depends on the type of interpersonal interaction (i.e., social vs. prosocial) or on other proximal features (e.g., whether the interaction takes place online vs. in-person, the closeness of the relationship, or amount of social connection associated with a given interaction). We randomly assigned a sample of full-time employees recruited via a special employed mTurk sample (N = 754) to perform weekly acts of kindness online versus in-person, to engage in weekly social interactions online versus in-person, or to list their daily activities (control) over the course of 4 weeks. First, on average, all conditions reported improvements in well-being (i.e., increases in positive affect and life satisfaction, decreases in negative affect) across the 4-week intervention period. Second, relative to controls, the four experimental groups reported increases in general social connectedness over time. Finally, according to auxiliary analyses collapsed across the experimental condition, closer relationship with target and non-digital medium of delivery predicted episode-level social connection, which, in turn, was associated with general social connectedness and positive affect. We conclude that the "who" and the "how" of a behavior (i.e., its target, its delivery method, and the feelings of social connection generated) are important for well-being, but not the "what" (i.e., whether the behavior is social or prosocial).
The experience of social exclusion in the workplace adversely impacts employees' well-being, job satisfaction, and productivity, and no one quite knows what to do about it. In this report, we ...describe the development and testing of three ostracism interventions, designed to help people cope with the negative effects of being excluded by one's team. Across five studies, participants were assigned to a virtual ball toss game where they were either included or excluded by their teammates. Afterwards, they were given a task where they could earn money for themselves, for their entire team, or for an unrelated group (charity). Excluded participants worked less hard for their teams (even when this meant sacrificing their own earnings). This sabotage effect was specific, meaning that excluded individuals worked less hard on behalf of their teams, but not when they worked for themselves or for charity. We devised three intervention strategies-perspective, mentorship, and empowerment-to combat the negative effects of ostracism on people's willingness to work for their teams. These interventions were successful; each increased people's persistence in a team-based reward task, and in some cases, even raised the outcomes of excluded teammates to levels observed in included teammates. The effectiveness of these interventions also replicated successfully, using preregistered hypotheses, methods, and analyses. These studies add novel insights to a variety of fields that have examined the consequences of social exclusion, including social psychology, organizational behavior, and management science.
Because of this, psychological safety and space for differing individual experiences within the learning environment are critical to ensuring the effectiveness of such training. ...Medeiros and ...Griffith (2019) suggest employees develop, analyze, and discuss their own cases or use roleplay to practice the codes taught. ...use post-training assessment to continue to provide the necessary resources and support, as well as course-correction or relearning opportunities when needed. ...individuals at higher risk for victimization may be a strategic target population for training.
Employee mental health is a pressing issue in today's workforce, with burnout and workplace stress negatively impacting personal relationships and costing billions in healthcare. Behavioral science ...offers insights and strategies to support mental health, but organizations need to rethink their HR and Benefits functions to fully leverage these insights. The Benefits function, rooted in a paternalistic tradition, focuses on health plans and employee assistance programs (EAPs) but struggles to change the perception that these programs are only for those in bad shape. On the other hand, the Learning and Development (LD) function, influenced by industrial engineering, prioritizes performance and productivity but often ignores the human aspects of work. The siloed nature of these functions hinders a holistic approach to employee thriving. To overcome these challenges, organizations need to bridge the gap between Benefits and LD, collaborate at the highest levels of leadership, and prioritize primary prevention. By investing in employee thriving, organizations can improve performance, retention, and healthcare costs in the long run.
Recently, findings on a wide range of auditory abnormalities among individuals with autism have been reported. To date, functional distinctions among these varied findings are poorly established. ...Such distinctions should be of interest to clinicians and researchers alike given their potential therapeutic and experimental applications. This review suggests three general trends among these findings as a starting point for future analyses. First, studies of auditory perception of linguistic and social auditory stimuli among individuals with autism generally have found impaired perception versus normal controls. Such findings may correlate with impaired language and communication skills and social isolation observed among individuals with autism. Second, studies of auditory perception of pitch and music among individuals with autism generally have found enhanced perception versus normal controls. These findings may correlate with the restrictive and highly focused behaviors observed among individuals with autism. Third, findings on the auditory perception of non-linguistic, non-musical stimuli among autism patients resist any generalized conclusions. Ultimately, as some researchers have already suggested, the distinction between impaired global processing and enhanced local processing may prove useful in making sense of apparently discordant findings on auditory abnormalities among individuals with autism.
IMPORTANCE: Recent governmental and private initiatives have sought to reduce health care costs by making health care prices more transparent. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the use of an ...employer-sponsored private price transparency platform was associated with lower claims payments for 3 common medical services. DESIGN: Payments for clinical services provided were compared between patients who searched a pricing website before using the service with patients who had not researched prior to receiving this service. Multivariable generalized linear model regressions with propensity score adjustment controlled for demographic, geographic, and procedure differences. To test for selection bias, payments for individuals who used the platform to search for services (searchers) were compared with those who did not use the platform to search for services (nonsearchers) in the period before the platform was available. The exposure was the use of the price transparency platform to search for laboratory tests, advanced imaging services, or clinician office visits before receiving care for that service. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Medical claims from 2010-2013 of 502 949 patients who were insured in the United States by 18 employers who provided a price transparency platform to their employees. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The primary outcome was total claims payments (the sum of employer and employee spending for each claim) for laboratory tests, advanced imaging services, and clinician office visits. RESULTS: Following access to the platform, 5.9% of 2 988 663 laboratory test claims, 6.9% of 76 768 advanced imaging claims, and 26.8% of 2 653 227 clinician office visit claims were associated with a prior search on the price transparency platform. Before having access to the price transparency platform, searchers had higher claims payments than nonsearchers for laboratory tests (4.11%; 95% CI, 1.87%-6.41%), higher payments for advanced imaging services (5.57%; 95% CI, 1.83%-9.44%), and no difference in payments for clinician office visits (0.26%; 95% CI; 0.53%-0.005%). Following access to the price transparency platform, relative claim payments for searchers were lower for searchers than nonsearchers by 13.93% (95% CI, 10.28%-17.43%) for laboratory tests, 13.15% (95% CI, 9.49%-16.66%) for advanced imaging, and 1.02% (95% CI, 0.57%-1.47%) for clinician office visits. The absolute payment differences were $3.45 (95% CI, $1.78-$5.12) for laboratory tests, $124.74 (95% CI, $83.06-$166.42) for advanced imaging services, and $1.18 (95% CI, $0.66-$1.70) for clinician office visits. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Use of price transparency information was associated with lower total claims payments for common medical services. The magnitude of the difference was largest for advanced imaging services and smallest for clinical office visits. Patient access to pricing information before obtaining clinical services may result in lower overall payments made for clinical care.
Mattering, one's sense of the difference one makes in the world, has been variously described in psychological and philosophical literatures. We propose the experience of mattering is tied to the ...perceived impact of one's actions and is best understood as an action-oriented, context-dependent construct. We introduce the Organizational Mattering Scale (OMS) for measuring mattering in organizations. Across four studies, factor analysis revealed a general mattering factor and two sub-factors, recognition and achievement (CFI = .98, RMSEA = .06). Construct validity and predictive validity are established across a range of psychological and organizational measures. Notably, OMS scores were more related to self-efficacy than self-esteem (p < .01), and positively related to key business outcomes, including job satisfaction (r = .51, p < .01), having a leadership role (t = 6.91, p < .01), recent promotions (t = 2.26, p < .05) and retention (r = .31, p < .01).
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