The importance of external social support for workplace-related stress as we grow older

Abstract

Objectives: For older employees, a mismatch between work and nonwork roles can lead to work-family conflict (WFC) and stress. This paper examines whether the availability of social support from outside the workplace can assist these employees in coping with the stress-related consequences of WFC.

Methods: This study used data from Waves 16 (Time 1) and 17 (Time 2) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (N = 2867). Sociodemographic characteristics were measured using age, sex and employment tenure. A moderated regression model was applied to the older employees in this sample using stress, WFC with external social support as the moderator. Analysis was additionally undertaken for the different aged employee cohorts, younger than 30 years and middle-aged (30-50).

Results: We found that external social support dampened the effect of WFC on employee stress for older employees. This effect was more powerful for older employees than for younger employees. Interestingly, older employees reported the same levels of external social support as employees between 30 and 50, but less than that of employees younger than 30 years.

Conclusions: Following our hypothesised relationships based on conservation of resources (COR), selection, optimisation with compensation (SOC) and socio-emotional selectivity theories (SST), this paper demonstrates that older employees benefit significantly from external social support. As external social support increased among older employees, the negative effect of WFC on stress decreased. However, this effect was only significant for employees up to the 68th percentile. Overall, this effect was less powerful for both groups of younger employees. Consistent with SOC and SST, older employees possessed different social motives (less reported external social support). Employer and government strategies assisting employees to develop social networks outside the workplace may provide significant benefits to organisations in addition to employees.

Keywords: aged; employment; middle aged; psychological distress; social support; work‐life balance.