Organizational Interventions to Enhance Work, Family and Health: Design Principles and Strategies

Ellen Kossek, Purdue University
Leslie Hammer, Portland State University

A critical challenge in work and family research is how to develop and implement evidence-based organizational interventions that decrease work-family conflict, leading to enhanced work, family and health outcomes across different contexts and occupations. This paper describes the research origins, principles, and design components and strategies used by a national multi-institutional research team, the Work, Family & Health Network, to create and implement a comprehensive multi-site intervention among lower wage health care workers and professional information technology workers. The intervention was designed to improve psychosocial workplace characteristics relevant to work, family, and health; thereby decreasing work-family conflict; and enhancing employee well-being and effectiveness in job and nonwork roles. We identified principles for designing organizational interventions for replication: (a) multilevel; (b) multi-disciplinary; (c) systemic in content and process; (d) bottom up and strategic design; and (e) customized and adaptive. This paper is one of the WFHN papers submitted to this session.